


Ink Stained

by theo_la_dora



Category: Carmilla - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/F, Happy Ending, Mystery, Tattoos, because that's a thing, kind of, the chicken and egg thing, tw for mentions of torture/blood and murder attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-09 22:32:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11114259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theo_la_dora/pseuds/theo_la_dora
Summary: There have always been time travellers.As far as humanity reaches back, there’ve been stories of the ones that can walk through time. No one knows much about them - there’s talk about creatures with too long limbs and too sharp teeth, claws instead of hands that can rip out hearts with a sweet-tongued prayer and the lines they write with their own blood to mark the things they change.And change they do.It is like a universal rule that the world requires balance and that consequently, every action leaves its traces.(Laura has worn hers since birth.)ORLaura keeps on meeting a mysterious girl everywhere and weird things happen as they try to figure out how they are connected to each other.Hopefully before it kills them.





	1. Hollow Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This was born from an orginial story idea that's been ghosting around in my mind for a while (because public transportation is good for inspiration, okay?) until I figured that it applied almost perfectly to the Carmilla universe and so... you get time travel with a twist. Because someone demanded plot from me.

**Soundtrack: Begin Again - Purity Ring**

* * *

 

The girl first appeared to Laura on a Wednesday.

It was just a regular caffeine-fueled, bone-tired morning during finals after yet another night of cramming as many facts on the French Revolution as well as case examples for her entertainment law class in her head as could possibly fit without toppling over. And when Laura stood there in the campus coffee shop at 8 a.m., bleary eyed and not quite functioning, she could almost taste the adrenaline on the back of her tongue like yesterday’s dinner. Her fingers jittered up and down the counter as if they were not quite part of her body as the droning sound in her mind increased in volume.

Considering the state Laura was in, it wasn’t all that surprising that the grip she had on her cup of coffee and the rainbow sprinkled cupcake was shaky at best. Commanding her legs to turn around and _move_ was therefore apparently more than she could handle because the world suddenly tilted sideways, the ground closer than it had been before and she felt beverage as well as pastry slipping from her hands when she almost ran into the person behind her in line.

“Oh crap!” Laura cried out and by sheer force of luck, she managed to keep her coffee from spilling, but the cupcake landed frosting first on the stranger’s chest, closely followed by her own hand.

“Squishy,” she thought as she reflexively closed her fingers and it wasn’t until she felt laughter rumble under her hands that she realized she wasn’t only essentially _groping_ a stranger’s chest but also calling it the equivalent of a sponge. Out loud and in public.

Laura plucked the cupcake off with a burning face and shaky fingers.

“Easy there, cutie,” a scratchy voice drawled that apparently belonged to the stranger she’d just sleep-molested. “Someone might take offense to you playing human bowling in a coffee shop. Violation of personal boundaries notwithstanding.”

Laura blinked. “Um… I’m sorry?”

The stranger – a girl clad only in black and leather – arched a brow behind the sunglasses she wore indoors in freaking _January_ and Laura couldn’t help but blush because even her sleep deprived brain could register that the girl she’d almost barreled over and again, _groped_ , was _gorgeous_.

“Are you asking or telling, cupcake?”

“Telling?” Laura smiled sheepishly, her cheeks burning. Her brain was scattered and so, so _tired_ that her vision almost blurred. “I’m really, _really_ sorry. Can I get you a napkin or something? Perhaps a dry cleaner – I’d give you my shirt, but that might end with one of us epically dead, so-”

“Nah, don’t worry,” the girl smirked, wiping away the frosting with one finger before licking it off and Laura couldn’t help but stare.

“Try to stay alive, cupcake, okay?” The girl said, her voice dropping another octave until it was just claws against sandpaper and pressed the sticky finger against Laura’s cheek, dragging it down her cheekbone until it rested against her jawline, just below her mouth. “And remember, sweet dreams.”

Laura didn’t realize how utterly _weird_ that was until the strange girl had already left the coffee shop without even buying anything. She stood there in a daze for a full five minutes until a lady at one of the tables – dark skin and blood red gloves – caught her attention by grabbing her wrist and telling her to maybe “go look at a mirror, moppet. Cats always leaves behind messes.”

There was a black line on her chin when she looked in the restroom mirror as if the girl had drawn with charcoal on her skin.

It didn’t wash off.

* * *

That same day a black mark appears on the side of the City Hall building, a black crow in flight and it feels like the whole city forgets to breathe.

(Laura doesn’t watch the news for a whole week, the space above her heart burning a hole through her shirt).

* * *

The next time Laura saw the girl, it was spring break and Betty was dragging her through a shopping mall on the look for a bikini of all things, because apparently, her father had invited the whole family to a spontaneous vacation on some private Caribbean island and Betty was _not prepared_.

“He said we were going skiing,” she reiterated for the hundredth time in the past two hours, cursing the lack of ready swim wear in stores that were still stocking for winter and Laura was about ready to hit her upside the head with the next two-piece that didn’t satisfy her roommates ridiculous demands on style and quality when a black spot in the crowd caught her eye, a faint buzzing in her ear.

“- but _no_ , Mommy 3.0 has apparently convinced him that getting a tan in March is just the thing to do and now I have to contend with last season’s leftovers and I _did not plan for this_. I planned for skiing, for cashmere sweaters and sport shirts and – Laura?”

“Hmm?” Laura was busy frowning at the masses of people frequenting the mall on a Saturday morning, trying to find whatever it was that had caught her attention. “Skiing, yes, I heard you.”

Betty let out that choked half snort, half laugh sound she did when couldn’t decide whether she was annoyed or amused. “No, you didn’t, Hollis. Is the City Hall mark still upsetting you that much?”

Laura blinked, averting her eyes from the crowds even though something kept tugging at the edge of her mind. “No, why – How do you even know about that?”

Betty’s expression softened just a fraction. “Because you acting weird and turning off the TV ever since that day wasn’t clue enough?”

“I…I’m not…” She sighed, rubbing her sternum through her shirt. “It just throws me off is all. That mark suddenly appears and no one knows how and why and what’s even been changed, it’s just…” she trailed off and Betty nodded knowingly.

“People celebrate it as a good sign, you know?” her roommate said quietly, brow furrowed. “That something changed for the better, that a crisis has been averted since it appeared at City Hall and we’re all still alive, you know?”

“I know,” Laura stressed, fingers fiddling with the bag full of stationary she’d bought to Betty’s good-natured exasperation. “I would just like to know _why_.”

“And there’s the whole reason why you’ll be a journalist and I’ll be a lawyer,” Betty smirked throwing an arm around Laura’s shoulders. The hug lifted her spirit at least a bit, the smile spreading a bit easier and it would’ve been fine, it would’ve just been _fine_ if she hadn’t caught that spot of black out of the corner of her eyes again.

The buzzing at the back of her mind grew louder, her nerve ends suddenly vibrating with a strange kind of energy as the undefined noise cleared into a rhythm similarly to -

A heartbeat.

“Wait!”, Laura yelled and she was out of Betty’s grasp and the store before she even realized she’d started running. The figure in black weaved in and out of crowds, dark curls flowing with the movement and she caught a flash of a pale face, the hint of a smile before the figure disappeared again.

Laura followed her, pushing past families, wailing children and gum-snapping teenagers and she was sure she’d caught up, the black figure just a grasp away, but then she blinked and the person she’d been following was suddenly at the bottom of the staircase.

“Hollis, what the fuck?” she heard Betty screech but Laura didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, her mind was whirring, breath going a mile a minute, because when the figure turned around, smirk plastered on her face –

The heartbeat-like noise at the back of her mind thumbed in time with Laura’s own heart and she recognized her.

The girl from the coffee shop.

* * *

There have always been time travellers. As far as humanity reaches back, there’ve been stories of the ones that can walk through time as if it’s sand on a beach, one in every few million people and no more than a handful for the whole world population. No one knows much about them - most of it fabricated from different myths across different cultures and there’s talk about creatures with too long limbs and too sharp teeth, claws instead of hands that can rip out hearts with a sweet-tongued prayer and the lines they write with their own blood to mark the things they change.

And change they do.

It is like a universal rule that the world requires balance – power comes with limitations, weakness and strength are different sides of the same coin and every action leaves its traces.

(Laura has worn hers since birth.)

* * *

In the days after the shopping mall incident Laura was filled with restlessness.

She couldn’t quite name it, the energy buzzing in her veins that kept her up even at night, and it wasn’t until she almost ran across half the campus because she’d seen a girl dressed in black exiting the philosophy building that she admitted to herself that she was a bit obsessed.

A teeny tiny bit.

“Fucking mental,” Betty muttered under her breath while meticulously folding her clothes and carefully placing them into her suitcase. “That’s what you are, Hollis. Running after a girl you’ve met once, because you think black clothes are somehow unique.”

“It was her,” Laura grumbled, chewing on one of the chocolate chip cookies Perry had brought over earlier, because Laf’s continuing experiments made her stress bake. “I just _know_ it was her and there’s something… _different_ about her and I just can’t figure out what it is.” She spit out a frustrated sound as well as few cookie crumbs and Betty wiped them away with an expression of thinly veiled disgust before fixing Laura with a look.

“You have a crush on her,” she stated blankly.

“I do not – I mean, she’s pretty, sure, but I don’t know _anything_ about her, she could be a serial killer for all I know or even a honest-to-Lestat vampire and I called her boobs _squishy_ for crying out loud and she just keeps showing up and I have a feeling that…,” Laura trailed off, annoyed with herself for not being able to properly form words.

“You and your feelings are going to be the death of me, Hollis. Remember that time you thought Danny was a werewolf and started following her around on every full moon?”

“I had reasonable grounds for suspicion,” Laura muttered disgruntled, batting at Betty’s hands when she tried stealing cookies from Laura’s plate.

“It was fucking hilarious, because the girl thought you had a crush on her and kept on dropping hints about you two going out on a date and you just thought she wanted to eat you.”

Laura blushed. “It’s not like that, okay?”

“Then what’s it like?” Betty sighed and when Laura didn’t answer, she bent down and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I care about you, tiny Hollis, okay? Are you sure you don’t want to come with me and spent a few days in the sun? Save me from the crazy people?”

“You love your crazy people,” Laura said with a small smile and a shake of her head. “My dad’s coming up for a visit next week and Kirsch’s been yammering on about checking out some club downtown. I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

“Yeah,” Betty drawled sarcastically and sometimes Laura’s lovely, lovely roommate was just plain annoying. “Because that’s what I’ll do with a borderline obsessed Laura Hollis. _Not worry_.”  

* * *

She sees the girl five more times after that.

On Saturday, she’s at the grocery store browsing the wine shelves before picking a bottle of tequila and a small can of lighter gasoline and moving so quickly through the queue at the check-out that Laura’s sure black magic is involved. Monday morning during rush hour, Laura catches a glimpse of her through the security door of a local bank wearing a cardigan cut like a floor-length cape and carrying a full on medieval _sword_ which should probably be worrying to some degree but she’s late to pick up her Dad at the train station and if she doesn’t show up there in the next five minutes he’ll be going full on Crocodile Dundee in Toronto which – not a good idea.

On Thursday, Laura’s taking her Dad (who thankfully keeps his survival tools mostly under wraps) on a tour around Kensington Market when she sees the girl on the other side of the road, still in sunglasses and her leather jacket but with a read streak in her hair and as if knowing that Laura’s watching, the girl turns around and waves before disappearing on a bus headed south. When her Dad asks about her new _friend_ , Laura just stutters and frowns which sets him off like a shark smelling blood and she’s beyond grateful when she can put him back into a train on Friday. That same day she sees the girl for the fourth time as she smirks at her through the smudged windows of a subway train car at St. George’s station during the evening rush and Laura’s pretty darn sure she also sees her balancing on a low wall in Riverdale Park West in a short black dress that same weekend, sunlight gleaming off midnight-blue curls so brightly that she can barely look at her.

(The faint background noise of another person’s heartbeat doesn’t disappear, though. It only grows louder when she’s near.)

* * *

The club was a sweaty mass of writhing bodies and sugar-sticky drinks and Laura was pretty sure that seventy percent of the body glitter on her skin wasn’t her own. She probably would have cared more about that five drinks ago, but as it was, the blaring music beat in tune with her mind and pulse and she felt more exhausted, yet at peace than she had for weeks.

Natalie kept on giggling something about a girl in a white dress in Laura’s ear that she could barely make out over the blasting music while SJ ordered more Fizzy Dagons for them from where she was perched on Kirsch’s back. Her boyfriend tried to hold up a discussion with Mel but the girl was just shaking her head at him in exasperation, yelling something about antlers and hunts that sounded rather dangerous – and potentially detrimental to Kirsch’s health. Laura smiled fondly at her group of friends and leaned against the balustrade overlooking the dance floor, the haze of alcohol clouding her vision when she suddenly felt that insistent tug somewhere in the periphery of her mind again.

She felt dizzy for a moment as another beat joined the music, the one in her head growing louder, more pronounced.

Natalie’s worried face appeared somewhere in the corner of her vision and Laura heard the distant echo of concerned words, felt hands tugging at her, but she couldn’t focus, couldn’t react because –

The girl was here.

It was strangely striking, the way she stood there, unmoving, in the middle of the dance floor, blue and red lights reflecting off pale skin left bare by the miniscule corset she was wearing, eyes two black lined, bottomless pits that stared right at Laura.

The girl smirked, the movement baring the briefest flash of gleaming teeth and Laura was moving before she was consciously aware of deciding on it. She pushed past groups of dancers, half convinced that when she finally reached the other side, the girl - this hallucination - would be gone again.

She wasn’t.

Up close, the girl was a study in black and white contrasts, hard lines and grey shadows and even the colourful club lights looked foreign on her skin. Her smile – too many teeth and bloodless lips – grew wider with every step Laura took towards her. The heartbeat in her mind amplified, thumbed more closely to her own and Laura didn’t stop walking until their foreheads were almost pressed together, breathing her in.

“Cupcake,” the girl rasped, something akin to wonder in her eyes and then her hands cupped Laura’s face, nose brushing hers before she pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth and Laura _snapped_.

Instead of letting the girl draw back, she leaned back in, holding her there with her hands on her hips, fingers digging into soft flesh - because flesh it was, not smoke, not dreams. She dragged her tongue across the girl’s lower lip, teeth nipping at it for a moment and Laura relished in the girl’s surprised gasp, the way her mouth opened and she drank her in.

There was a slightly bitter taste to her lips, like the last remnants of wine mixed with cigarettes and Laura couldn’t get enough. The heartbeat got faster, got tangled with her own until, with a sudden hiccough, they beat as one. A deep sated heat spread from her lower vertebrae up to the base of her skull where the girl’s fingers were pressed against her skin and she’d wanted this, had wanted this for _so long_ without finding a name for it and –

The girl pulled back, looking frazzled and overwhelmed and _young_ and for a few heavy breaths they just stared at each other, hearts beating in sync.

“Let’s get out of here, cupcake,” the strange girl whispered, fingers entwining with Laura’s and dragging her towards the entrance before taking a left turn down a dark, less crowded hallway. Laura, recklessness receding with the fading music, almost questioned their destination when the girl spun her around, pressed her against a graffiti covered concrete wall and kissed her again.

Away from the crowds, it escalated quickly. Laura couldn’t help herself but touch the cool, bare skin, tangle her hands in short, dark curls and pull her even closer when the girl smirked against her lips, hot breath ghosting down her neck as her fingers moved to unbutton her jeans. Laura’s breath hitched, the heat along her spine coiling between her legs and she let out a whine when the girl did nay but skim along the line of her underwear. The stranger huffed out a laugh which quickly caught in her throat as Laura’s hand moved beneath the waistband of her leather pants, her head falling forward just the slightest bit when Laura unzipped them, letting her fingers graze slightly over a slip of cotton.

“What’s your name?” she breathed into the space between their mouths. Instead of answering, the girl just moved her fingers underneath Laura’s underwear, trailing the wetness one, two times, circling her clit, before slowly pushing two fingers in.

Laura’s head fell back against the concrete with a gasp, the girl mouthing something filthy against her neck but she couldn’t let this go, couldn’t –

She pressed two fingers against the girl’s clit, rubbing the spot while the girl continued fucking her and the whine that left her throat was all too telling. “What’s – your - _name_?” Laura insisted, arousal spiraling and the girl mewled frustrated, hips bucking when Laura didn’t give her more.

“Carmilla,” the girl snarled breathlessly and Laura grinned, pushing in two fingers and the girl’s head fell onto her shoulder, teeth biting her neck.

From then on it was a quickly mounting affair, hot breaths and uncoordinated kisses as they both lost control and Laura moved her free hand into the girl’s hair when she felt herself on the edge, forcing her to look at her.

Black pits, filled with something raw and unspeakable, stared back at her. Dark hair stuck to her skin, but there was no flush, no colour to it and Laura felt as if she’d seen something she was never supposed to. The other girl pressed a hand against Laura’s sternum, skin that was covered by fabric, her breath harsh against Laura’s cheek and there was something in her gaze, a question, barely formulated, as if she knew –

As if she _knew_.

“Carm…,” she whispered, feeling her control slipping as the pleasure got too intense and then she fell, waves crashing above her and she mouthed the girl’s name into the corner of her mouth, heard her whispering “Laura, Laura, Laura” back at her and didn’t even think of questioning it before she blacked out.

When she woke up, she was slumped against the same concrete wall, pants still unbuttoned with Carmilla nowhere to be seen.

* * *

When she looks at herself in the mirror the next morning, her neck is covered in a line of angry, red bruises, her lips stained cherry red and sensitive to the touch. But that’s not even the most worrying part, _no_ –

The skin around her hips and thighs, on her neck and face is covered in something that might be charcoal, might be ink – pitch-black lines that fade into gray – and Laura feels herself trembling when she realizes what they are.

Handprints.

She’s covered in black stained _handprints_ , the most noticeable the pair wrapped around her neck and cheeks and she rubs at them until her skin is red and sore and she realizes that the drops mixing with the water from the shower are her own salty tears.

(They don’t wash off, but like the first line, they fade with each passing day while the tattoo spreading on Laura’s sternum grows darker.

It grows bigger, too.)

* * *

“Stupid, Hollis. You’re just plain old _stupid_ ,” Laura chided herself and hastened her steps as her own heartbeat droned in her ears, “walking around the city in the middle of the night _alone_ is just asking for trouble.” And of course, her phone was dead and she’d forgotten to take the bear spray her Dad kept sending her because she was _stupid_ and she was going to get herself killed and –

She chanced a glance over her shoulder and gulped when she saw the outline of a car that seemed to have followed her for quite a while by now and almost broke out into a run as she crossed the bridge over the Don River on her way home. As if the driver of the creepy car realized her intentions, the headlights suddenly lit up, catching her in their midst and at that point, running wasn’t even a decision anymore.

She heard the engine roar, the car suddenly speeding towards her and Laura’s mind was a never-ending circle of “ _What the hell – what the hell – what the hell_?!” as she jumped on the bridge’s balustrade in her heavy winter coat and backpack on to avoid getting run over.

The car stopped.

Breathing heavily, adrenaline-fueled blood pounding in her ears, she saw the car’s backlights light up red before it reversed, driving quickly back towards where Laura was still perched precariously on the balustrade. Laura didn’t pause to think before she quite possibly did the stupidest thing she’d ever done.

She jumped.

She jumped from that bridge and into the Don River and she knew that the river wasn’t very wide and that currents weren’t strong, but it was mid-April and the cold water almost sent Laura into shock once she breached the surface. She tried moving, desperately tried to paddle to find her way back up, but the water was dark, her heavy coat, boots and backpack dragging her down, hindering her movements and her lungs _burned_.

She knew that whoever had chased her was probably still on that bridge, probably still looking for her, but she needed to breathe, needed to breathe _now_ –

Suddenly, another body shot into the water beside her, a flash of pale skin in the murky black water. Someone grabbed her shoulders tightly, almost bruising and she was pulled through the surface, fresh, cold air filling her aching lungs.

“Fucking move!” a voice snarled somewhere beside her and she knew that voice, knew that _face_ –

“Carmilla?” Laura tried to gasp out, but it was all just dirty water and coughed up air and she tried to move, because the cold was paralyzing and where were fingers and her feet – her _feet_? Somehow, and Laura had no idea how, Carmilla managed to get them both to shore, soaked and gasping for air and once she had solid ground under her, Laura just collapsed.

“No, Laura, no, no, _no_ …” Hands shook her, urging her back up and when the world stopped spinning, she saw Carmilla’s face hovering above her, black eye make-up dripping down her cheeks, shirt and pants clinging to her and a concerned expression on her face.

She smirked. “What? Didn’t I tell you to stay alive, Liebling?” she drawled and Laura couldn’t reply, couldn’t say anything. Because looking at that face, pale lines and dark eyes, she suddenly remembered another night so much like this one. That same face in the headlights of a car in a foggy night, broken glass and the smell of gasoline in the air as she cried and Laura remembered–

Laura remembered _everything_.


	2. Bruised Bodies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a fake, pink Christmas tree makes an apperance, Laura contemplates pluralism and Carmilla doesn't like answering questions. But that's fine. Because Lafontaine has all the answers.

**Soundtrack: Half of Something Else - The Airborne Toxic Event**

* * *

 

There’s a truth in here somewhere, Laura thinks as Carmilla pulls a bag of clothes out of seeming nowhere and starts undressing. The night is cold and still smells like smoke despite the river in Laura’s lungs and it’s not until Carmilla starts shaking her that she snaps out of it and pushes her pants down her legs.

Someone tried to run her over, a voice in Laura’s head whispers as she shrinks back from Carmilla when it comes to taking off her shirt, the fear seated deeper than the numbness, the paralyzing cold creeping in her bones.

Someone tried to _kill_ her.

(Carmilla curses lowly under her breath as she wraps a leather jacket around her shoulders and Laura still sees the headlights.)

* * *

This was, hands down, the strangest situation Laura had ever found herself in.

If she wasn’t still recovering from her near death experience, it might have freaked her out even more to be sitting here, in a 24-hour diner, dressed in clothes of questionable origin and a leather jacket that smelled like ink and old books across from the girl that she’d been chasing for weeks.

A girl that had just casually placed a sodding _baseball bat_ next to their booth as if that was a normal thing to do.

Carmilla was –

Well…

_Currently_ , she was busy checking out the menu and quirking her eyebrow every few minutes as if the dishes listed were somehow amusing to her and Laura didn’t know how to deal with that.

At all.

So as stealthily as possible, she moved her hand to surreptitiously pinch her forearm but all it did was make her yelp. Looking up, she was still in the run-down diner with the creepy Santa Clause decorations and blinding neon lights and Carmilla looked at her oddly.

“Everything all right there, sweetheart?”

“Yes, yes, absolutely, I’m totally fine and dandy, no need to worry there, buddy,” Laura almost yelled, her voice hitting new, previously unknown tunes and she winced.

“Yeah,” Carmilla said slowly. “Just decaf for you then.”

Laura deflated a bit, picking up her paper napkin to tear off small chunks with a frustrated pout on her lips. “So, are we going to talk about it?” she finally asked, figuring that the night couldn’t get stranger than this.

Carmilla didn’t even look up. “Talk about what?” she asked, still perusing the menu. Who was she kidding, there were only about three edible things on that list and that was Laura being generous. “You jumping into ice-cold rivers in the middle of the night like it’s a particular hobby of yours?”

“I was held up in the library,” Laura grumbled, leaving out the part where she’d been busy researching old mythological references to Other, to vampires and the fair folk and had gotten invested in an old Sumerian tome on different kinds of demons, since the object of her research interests was sitting right in front of her.

“That’s the dumbest excuse I’ve ever heard for almost getting killed,” Carmilla scoffed and finally put the menu down.

Laura glared right back at her. “Is that so?” she said. “Any particular reason why you were walking around so late at night then? Oh, let me guess, you were _stargazing_.”

A slow smirk spread on the girls face and together with the smudged make-up and messy hair she looked just like any normal teenager. A normal teenager that saved people from drowning and carried around baseball bats. “Well, the stars are particularly beautiful tonight, darling.”

“You’re a sap.”

“Oh, that’s _mean_ ,” Carmilla shot back and Laura couldn’t help but burst out into startled laughter. For a moment, they just looked at each other, matching grins on their faces when the waitress, an older woman who for some reason wore traditional Bavarian garb, turned up at their desks, asking for their orders with a strong German accent.

When she finally left – not without leaving a plate of ancient tasting gingerbread men behind – awkward silence spread between the two girls. Well, awkward on Laura’s part, Carmilla just looked mildly disinterested as she scribbled something into a worn journal that she’d fished out of freaking nowhere.

Or the depths of the duffel bag she was carrying around with her.

“So…,” Laura started again, twirling wet strands of hair that smelled faintly like river between her fingers. “You saved me,” she blurted out and Carmilla’s already arched eyebrow almost disappeared under her fringe.

“Way to state the obvious, cutie,” Carmilla quipped and Laura was about ready to hit her with the menu. Or the gingerbread, she wasn’t picky, really.

“I didn’t mean _today_ ,” Laura hastened to say, voice skipping in her panic, hands turning the napkin into snowflakes. “I mean thank you for that and all – I would’ve probably died there if you didn’t jump in all hero ex Machina but,” she trailed off, flustered before fixing her eyes on Carmilla. “You were there at the crash side. When I was six years old you were at the crash side where my mother died and you dragged me out of the car and I can’t believe I remember this but you were _there_.”

She was met with silence and Laura didn’t dare look up.

“Sounds like a hallucination to me, buttercup,” Carmilla finally said, tone suspiciously even and Laura felt fury crawling up her throat. “Are you sure you didn’t drink the Kool-Aid?”

“Don’t,” she hissed, shooting her a dirty look, “don’t _lie_ to me. Not about this, okay?”

“I’m not.” Carmilla’s face was carefully blank. “It’s not like I could lie about something I haven’t done yet.”

“ _Yet_?” Laura’s mind latched onto that particular bit of information and then she grabbed Carmilla’s hands, turning them over before the other girl knew what was happening.

They were stained black from the tips down the insides of her fingers as if she’d been playing around with ink. The same shade of black turning midnight-blue when held up to the light as her hair and Laura couldn’t help herself but align the girl’s fingers with her own.

Carmilla flinched upon contact.  

“I wondered, you know,” Laura said quietly into the heavy silence as her fingers continued wrapping around the ink-stained ones, heart beating against her ribcage like a wild thing.  Carmilla didn’t make a sound, her fingers trembling. “About the marks - what they mean and how it works. There’s not a lot of information to go by, you know? Just tomes upon tomes in languages I don’t speak about theories and other maybes and it’s – it’s _frustrating_ , you know? Not knowing, but I think,” and here she lifted the hand she’d had pressed against Carmilla’s, a small, almost triumphant smile playing around her lips as she showed the other girl the dark smudges, “I think that I get it now. At least a little bit.”

“That’s an interesting theory, cupcake,” Carmilla said flatly, snatching her hand back as if burned. “You sure that the river did not fuck with your brain?”

“So, you deny being a time traveller?”

“Say it a little louder, why don’t you?” Carmilla almost snarled, but then quickly retracted when she had to face Laura’s kicked puppy face. “Fine,” she sighed wearily, eyes flickering between Laura’s face that was lighting up like the fake, pink Christmas tree in the corner and her own curled up hands. “I am… you know – _Fine_.”

“Can I call you Fran then?” Laura grinned when Carmilla just glared at her. Thankfully, the waitress interrupted them, placing hot cocoa and waffles in front of Laura who could barely contain her excitement and just a cup of coffee in front of Carmilla.

“Rather anticlimactic to your extensive perusal of the menu, hmm?”

“Nothing wrong with the classics, Liebling.”

“And for you, classics would be…,” Laura pointed at her with a syrup dripping fork, “how old exactly?”

“In general or specific for today?” Carmilla replied, eyeing the airborne fork wearily.

Laura choked on her cocoa, almost dropping the cup. “You’re not from… here?”

“I’m from next week,” Carmilla said with a roll of her eyes and leaned in to wipe off Laura’s cocoa mustache with a napkin. “Nine days from now if you want to get specific.”

“So, that’s why you showed up at the bridge? Because you knew I would jump?”

“No, I didn’t know about that,” Carmilla shrugged. “I felt the pull and so I went.”

“The pull?” Laura asked curiously, even more intrigued when a slow smirk spread across Carmilla’s lips.

“Tell me you haven’t felt it, cupcake,” she drawled, laughing when a telltale blush stained Laura’s cheeks. “You did, didn’t you?”

Laura almost hid her face in her pancakes. “My friends all thought I was insane when I left with you at the club,” she muttered.

“At the club?” Carmilla smirked. “That sounds like an interesting story to experience another time.”

“So, you haven’t…”

“Afraid not, sweetheart. But I will.” Laura ducked her head down again and Carmilla’s laugh died down to something raspy that made Laura’s heart flutter as she tried to control her blush.

“Won’t you look at that,” the time traveller whispered suddenly, eyes wide with something that might be fear, might be awe. “The snake that bites its own tail. Who poisoned whom first, what do you think?”

“Uhm,” Laura blinked, feeling her perspective shifting. There was no noise clouding her mind now, the heart she heard beating in time with her own the most prominent sound. “Maybe it’s more like one of those chicken and egg things? Where the point is that there is no answer?”

Carmilla blinked slowly. “Yeah,” she said, smiling softly. “Maybe.”

* * *

When Laura asks Carmilla how old she really is, Carmilla just shoots her a _look_ and picks up the baseball bat that she’s casually dragged up to Laura’s doorstep like a particularly recalcitrant pet and, clicking it against the heel of her left boot, she quips that that’s a very rude question and she must go and catch her ride ten minutes ago.

Laura’s key is jammed sideways into the lock, refusing to budge. So, when Carmilla leans in to press a kiss to her cheek, the smell of river and ink surrounding her, she can barely open her mouth to protest before the other girl is already walking away. A dark shadow in an already dim hallway and the dragging noise of the baseball bat disappears the moment the shadows seem to swallow Carmilla whole, taking the heartbeat with her.

(When Laura wakes up the next morning, there are new words written in unfamiliar letters on her skin, spreading from collarbone to collarbone.)

* * *

Laf's laboratory was a buzzing, whizzing and otherwise strange noise making place and for a moment Laura thought she’d stepped into Weasley’s Wheezes, especially when Lafontaine turned around and blinked at her from behind a pair of googles, wearing what looked like a space suit to her.

“Laura!” they exclaimed, turning off the Bunsen burner and moving a few bottles of dangerously boiling, strange purple goo out of the way to greet their friend.

“Greetings, Miss Hollis,” the tinny voice of Laf’s AI, J.P. Armitage, that was wired through most of their technological equipment and especially the lab, welcomed her as well.

 “What brings you here?” Lafontaine asked, wiping off their hands as Laura still exchanged pleasantries with the polite AI that had adopted the mannerisms of a Victorian gentleman.

Minus the prejudices of course.

“Answers?” Laura smiled, wrapping her oversized Christmas sweater closer around her body. It was spring time but ever since the incident at the Don River she’d been feeling chilly and she’d craved something warm and comfy. Something that smelled like home.

Laf grinned and pushed the googles off their face. “Ask and you shall receive them.”

“Most certainly!”, J.P. chimed in.

“Don’t…” Laura hesitated. “Don’t ask me why, okay? But can you tell me everything you know about time travellers?”

Lafontaine’s eyes widened beneath the messy fringe. “Time travellers? That’s a rather broad subject, frosh.”

“Just act as if I never heard of them before, okay?” Laura sat down on an empty chair that did not look like it would gain sentiency in the next half hour and pulled her backpack on her lap. “I need a fresh perspective.”

Laf’s gaze was considering but then they nodded, folding their hands in front of their stomach. “There have been time travellers as long as there’ve been humans. It’s generally assumed that they are born to humans which is the most _awesome_ form of genetic mutation I’ve ever heard, but moving on - Early religions depicted them sometimes as gods, sometimes as demons – there’s no real consistency in their portrayal. They’re ascribed a great many powers, many of them exaggerated I guess, but consistent across cultures are these,” they explained, counting down on their fingers as J.P. filled in for them.

“Longevity bordering on immortality and the ability to walk through time, past as well as future are generally attributed to personages known as time traveller s. And most prominently, they are known to change events to suit their will.”

Laura nodded, so far there’d been nothing new.

“Any event or person that’s been affected by time travel is marked as such,” Lafontaine took over again. “For people, it’s tattoos. For events, it’s a bit more difficult depending on type. Sometimes physical objects like buildings, ground sites or even photos are marked with a symbol, but there’s been talk about memories being inwrought with a sort of watermark, especially after World War II. Of course, that’s nearly impossible to prove or study because memories are constructs of the mind and not infallible as well as impossible to objectively compare, so there you go.”

“The marks that are known differ in terms of colour and symbol,” J.P. interjected, pulling up a file on the computer screen and presenting a series of pictures detailing different marks.

“Yes, see?” Lafontaine pointed excitedly at the first one. “This is the one that popped up at the capitol a few weeks ago, the black one with the crow. It’s one of the oldest ones with first appearances dating back to around 3000 BC in southern Mesopotamia. And this one here,” they pointed at a blood red one depicting a cartwheel like symbol, “this one showed up around a thousand years ago in Morocco.” They pointed out a few more, detailing their origin and history, but what really stuck out to Laura was the picture of a panther skull wrapped in vines on the second to last page. She rubbed her sternum almost instinctively as she pointed at it in silent question. 

“That one?” Laf furrowed their brow and started gnawing on a pencil. “Popped up a few times between the seventeenth and nineteenth century but nothing since then. My best guess? Whoever left those is probably dead.”

Laura swallowed, her throat sandpaper dry and she just nodded, hoping that Lafontaine wouldn’t catch on.

“So, there are two things these marks tell us. First, they’re not many of them. Perhaps five to ten travellers in the whole world. While theoretically it could be possible that a whole group of people uses a specific symbol – like a family or a clan – it’s much more logical to assume low numbers because…, Jeep?”

“There are not a great number of reports,” the tinny voice explained in a British accent. “Considering humanity’s great interest and curiosity in the subject, it is only logical to assume that more cases of travellers were known if numbers were higher than found marks.

“Well spoken, J.P. Second – and that’s my personal favorite – it’s possible to assume that these people can’t travel back further than their own time, judging from the way the appearances of the marks are scattered across the timeline. I guess you could say that their own existence works like a sort of anchor for them? But that’s purely hypothetical.” Lafontaine shrugged, as J.P. closed the file once again. Suddenly, an alarm sounded and they jumped up with a panicked expression to save the disturbingly green glowing concoction in the corner from boiling over. Laura swore she saw a pair of eyes in there, but things in Laf’s study were almost always better left unquestioned.

Having saved them from certain doom at the hand of whatever creature was ready to cross dimensions just five seconds ago, Lafontaine wiped their brow and motioned for J.P. to continue with story-time.

“Over the course of history,” the AI said pleasantly, “there have been a great many discussions as to whether a single group of people should be allowed to wield so much power.”

“Yeah,” Laf nodded. “Generally, people either think that they have their powers for a reason or that they’re just a group of criminals that, at best, should be regulated by government. You remember Danny?”

Laura nodded, the iron fist around her heart and stomach tightening. Danny had been rather vocal in her opinions on what she’d called ‘monstrous anomalies’ on several occasions, scolding Laura for her cautious curiosity until she’d finally broken off all contact, knowing that she’d never be able to trust her with the mark on her chest.

“Yeah,” Laf said, expression sympathetic as they shook their head. “Much like that. These geniuses as well as those that seek to make profit of their talents are probably another reason why there are so few time travellers - though no one has ever been able to calculate a number. Every time a traveller’s identity has been revealed over the centuries, they’ve disappeared soon after. There was this case of the Austrian countess – Karnstadt, Karnstern, Karnstein?”

“The Countess Mircalla von Karnstein,” J.P. corrected her gently.

Laf nodded. “Yes, her. She was born in the late seventeenth century and her being a time traveller was a rather… badly kept secret. An angry mob killed her when she was eighteen which puts a whole new perspective on the term _legal age_. Probably didn’t help that she had a reputation for seducing innocent maidens, I guess. And look!”, they said, pointing once again at the screen that J.P. was currently filling with photos. “We even have a picture of her.” 

It was a portrait of a young woman in historic dress robes who smiled shyly at whoever had painted her, a small, black book between her fingers and Laura felt like all the air had left the room.

It was Carmilla.

Neither Laf nor J.P. seemed to notice her distraction, their words muffled as if wrapped in cotton and she had to keep herself from touching the picture, her fingers burning.

“May I present to you?” J.P. asked. “The Countess Mircalla von Karnstein. Born 1680 in Styria, Austria, disappeared and presumed to be dead in September 1698.”

_Mircalla_ , Laura mouthed tonelessly, the word tasting sharp against her tongue. Mircalla von Karnstein who died in 1698. Mircalla who she’d hooked up with weeks ago at that club, Mircalla who’d saved her from drowning three days ago.

Laura felt like throwing up.

“There’s a theory that the panther mark is hers. The dates of its appearances fit well with her presumed life span, but people are being stupid dickheads about it because apparently, panthers and skulls are a little too martial for a countess.” Lafontaine rolled their eyes. “Fucking prejudices. What do you think, Laura? _Laura_?!”

But Laura had already run out of the laboratory and past Perry who was holding up a plate of freshly baked brownies, confusion and worry on her face. She just kept on running until her legs collapsed under her on the living room floor and she had trouble breathing. Betty found her there three hours later, eyes wide and scared, the residues of panic still crawling all over her skin.

“I need your help,” Laura whispered when her roommate dropped her groceries with a thud, fruit and rice spilling all over the floor. “Please, Betty, I need your help.”

* * *

Betty finds out that the words are written in Kurrentschrift, an old script used in the German speaking area and especially Austria from the beginning of the sixteenth century until the 1950s.

It’s –

It’s a poem. The writing on her chest is a poem. And Betty can’t make out everything but it seems to be a story about the sun and moon falling in love which –

Really?

It doesn’t help with the million and one questions burning on her tongue but when Betty quietly asks her about the mark on her sternum, she just shakes her head.

(Laura knows what that means.)

* * *

Laura found her a few days later in front of the Robespierre building on campus.

Her own heartbeat accelerated and then fell in sync with the one she heard louder and louder the closer she came. Carmilla was scribbling in the same journal she’d seen her with at the diner, her feet bare despite the cool weather, wearing leather pants and a red flannel shirt and Laura didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or throw up.

Well, maybe both. Pluralism was a thing after all.

“So, from which time are you now?” Laura asked with a wide, almost too bright smile, rivalling the spring sun in her back and the episode at the river must have already happened for her, because Carmilla didn’t look surprised that Laura knew. She had to be at least part disgruntled cat though, judging from the way she blinked up at her from behind a pair of oversized sunglasses and almost hissed at her.

“I don’t know. Where are you from, Doctor?”

“Why don’t you tell me, _Mircalla von Karnstein_ ,” Laura bit out, those splintered pieces of not knowing and being afraid somehow finding their way into her voice and making it hurt. “Apparently, you died over three hundred years ago.”

“Look who’s figured out the internet now,” Carmilla drawled, voice unperturbed as she continued scribbling.

“Yeah, because you’d rather act all woman of mystery and disappear into freaking nowhere than answer my questions, because that’s real mature.”

“And you yelling at me in broad daylight is a sign of advanced wisdom then?” Carmilla snapped her book shut after putting in a knife as a placeholder and stood up, walking down the path towards the Humanities building without so much as a goodbye.

“Oh no,” Laura huffed out, hastening her steps to catch up with the other girl. “You don’t get to do that, you stupid, annoying -   _time paradox_.”

“Try and stop me.”

Laura placed herself in front of the girl, crossing her arms in front of her chest when the only reaction was the arch of a brow appearing over the rim of Carmilla’s sunglasses. “Are you really going to be like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like _this_.” Laura gestured towards her, her airborne fingers almost hitting Carmilla’s nose and knocking the sunglasses off her face. “I almost _died_ a week ago – I mean, someone almost killed me and then I almost killed myself and then you saved me…” She floundered, curling her hands into fists as she tried to regain her composure. “But the point is, I almost _died_ and it’s been a week and you’ve disappeared and there’s still someone out there who tried to kill me and you – you’re over three hundred years old and I just-”

“A simple ’Thank you’ would have been enough, too, cupcake,” Carmilla smirked, stepping past Laura to walk away again and the words were like a sucker punch to the gut.

“Is that all you’re going to say?” Laura yelled after her, hating herself for the way her voice cracked at the words. “You’re just going to walk away after all-”

“What do you want, Laura?” Carmilla asked tersely, having halted her movements at Laura’s words, body half turned around as if she wasn’t sure if she should stay or go.

“I- I don’t know,” Laura admitted, her voice small. “It’s just- You saved me, right? That has to – That counts for something, right?”

“Laura…”

“And I can’t… It’s not like I can talk to anyone about it, right? Because my Dad and Betty will freak out – because of the someone trying to kill me part and the time travelling extravaganza and because this city is like a beehive since January and I just- I don’t know what to do, so can you please-”

The thumping of their synchronized heartbeats grew louder, blood pounding and Laura only breathed in freely when the scent of ink and books enveloped her again.

She choked back a sob.

“I’m not-” Carmilla’s voice was hesitant, her breath ghosting over Laura’s skin as she stood so close, in this blurry not-quite embrace. “Don’t expect any heroic crap from me, ok?”

Laura tried to smile back, the space between her ribs burning as Carmilla lifted her hand, showing her the ink-free inside. “I’m not from anywhere,” she said. “This is me.”

And Laura pressed her cheek against the offered palm and closed her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “This is you.”

* * *

Carmilla gives Laura her phone number like it’s casual, like an afterthought and Laura has to keep herself from writing down all her contact information including three junk e-mail accounts, her Dad’s home number and Betty’s work contact because that might be _excessive_.

(As soon as she gets home, Laura copies the number from her phone and writes it down with black sharpie on the inside of her wrist. Eleven digits that keep reminding her that this is real.

That this is not a dream.)


	3. Coffee Cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which coffee is used to neutralize curses, Laura should definitely reconsider her choice in jewlery and Carmilla has no concept of doors. Also, Betty needs bleach.  
> All of the bleach.

**Soundtrack: On the Radio - Regina Spektor**

* * *

 On Monday, Carmilla waited for Laura on her doorstep.

Her hair was cut short, inky tips that framed her jaw like they'd done at the club and she held two take-away cups of coffee in her hands. When Laura saw her, she almost toppled over from surprise - which would’ve been unfortunate as the concrete sidewalk and Laura were not the best of friends on any given day.

“Morning, cupcake,” Carmilla drawled, seemingly amused at Laura’s wide-eyed, not quite awake state when the girl just blinked at her owlishly. “Thought you might need this.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” Laura blurted out, not quite ready to adequately process _Carmilla_ being on her doorstep in a way that didn’t feel like pulling teeth, but always open for caffeinated beverages.

“Quite literally, I’m sure,” Carmilla quipped with a considering look at the dark circles under Laura’s eyes, causing the girl to sheepishly rub at them as they started walking towards the next underground station. “Another eighteen-hour workday?”

“Well,” Laura said, hitching her backpack up higher. It was quite a lot heavier now that she’d started carrying around bear spray everywhere. “Not all of us can turn ‘woman of mystery’ into our chosen career path, you know?”

“Pray tell, what’s your favorite pastime if you so categorically dismiss mine?”

Laura grinned up at her from beneath a knitted hat with a snowflake on the front. “Sometimes it’s not all that hard to believe you were a countess once, Miss Karnstein,” she teased.

“Lies.” One corner of Carmilla’s mouth twitched upwards. “It’s all lies.”

“I know. Because then you’d have _manners_ , right?”

Unamused, Carmilla threatened to shove her in to the bustling traffic, not quite managing to hide her grin when Laura yelped. “I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now,” she grumbled, shaking her head fondly when Laura almost choked on her own giggles.

And the coffee. Definitely the coffee.

“Well, you did bring me coffee,” Laura acquiesced as they walked down the steps of the underground station. It was messy and full of people and Laura had to be careful not to stumble over them because the girl next to her was all kinds of distracting. “So that counts for something.”

“Oh, so I’m a good girl now?” Carmilla’s expression turned from playful to suggestive in five hot seconds and Laura’s face burned brighter than a fire engine. “Never knew it was that easy.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Laura said, a bit sarcastically. “ _Easy_.”

“Not a word I’d use to describe you, cupcake, but far be it from me to dictate someone else’s identity.”

Laura glared at her. “You’re the worst.”

“I thought I was a lifesaver?”

“You’re becoming more of a nuisance with every second.”

They’d reached the platform, the arrival board announcing that the next train would arrive in two minutes as the familiar smell of the Toronto public transport system surrounded them. “Did you know that I once followed you down St. George’s station? I felt like such a stalker that day and I swear you-”

Laura suddenly swiveled around to face a sheepish looking Carmilla who apparently found great interest in the life-sized advertisements on the other side of the platform and wouldn’t meet her narrowed eyes. “ _Carmilla_ …”

“I was curious, okay?”

“But why were you-“

“Is that my phone number?” Carmilla was evidently also quite skilled at the art of deflection, because she picked up Laura’s wrist, pushing back the sleeve of her coat to examine the black numbers more closely. “Oh, were you feeling sappy?”

Laura yanked back her arm with a glare that could rival that of an angry kitten. “I’m not the one appearing and disappearing like a sodding house-elf all the time,” she huffed out indignantly, ignoring Carmilla’s downright offended expression at being compared to Dobby. “So, you might not share the sentiment, but I actually think it quite reassuring that I can call you like a normal person and not wish upon a star or whatever you people like to do.”

“We write messages in blood, actually. It’s really quite efficient.”

Laura looked like she was two point five seconds away from imploding, so Carmilla quickly grabbed her other hand, produced a sharpie form god-knows-where and wrote another series of numbers down the inside of the still bare wrist before tying a bracelet with what looked like a bat wing around it.

“In case the number doesn’t work, wait there for me, okay Liebling?” she murmured, something unmentionable or other passing in her eyes before she curled her free hand around Laura’s neck and pulled her in for a kiss that tasted like coffee and ink and other promises. “And the bracelet should help keep you hidden from other would-be killers, so don’t take it off. I got to go now, figure out who’s been trying to kill you and shit.”

“Why are you-” The arriving train cut off Laura’s slightly dazed question and she could only watch as Carmilla pocketed the sharpie in the back pocket of her leather pants before throwing Laura one last smirk and sauntering up the stairs.

“Because apparently, I’m a good person now,” was the last thing Laura heard before the train doors closed with a thud. Under the circumstances, it was probably a good thing that the train was packed since only the sheer number of people kept her standing when she carefully pushed back the bat wing charm to look at what Carmilla had written on her arm and realized what it meant.

It was a series of coordinates.  

* * *

That same day, the mark on City Hall appears on the parliament’s building in Ottawa as well and the uproar that’s previously been exclusive to Toronto takes hold of the whole country.

(Laura checks the coordinates on Google Earth and stares at the picture for almost half an hour.

It’s a cabin in the woods.)

* * *

There was a necklace on Laura’s nightstand when she woke up Thursday morning. The pendant was a gemstone framed by metal ornaments and Laura couldn’t help the flip in her stomach when she saw it, sunlight catching in the red of the stone. It had to be another one of Carmilla’s presents, the prettier companion to the bat wing bracelet that was still tied around her wrist despite her roommate’s distaste for the thing.

“Shiny,” Betty grinned, looking up from a gigantic, ancient tome that took up three-quarters of their breakfast table with her reading glasses askew and some marmalade on her left cheek when Laura bounced into the kitchen. “You got yourself a girlfriend or something, Hollis?”

Tugging at the pendant, Laura couldn’t help the smile that spread on her cheeks. The thing between her and Carmilla was… _messy_ at best – not just because of the potential heartbreak, but also because of the collateral damage that came with time travel and its marks which –

Not exactly an ideal conversation topic for breakfast, so Laura just did an awkward head-shake and blurted out, “Or something?” with bright cheeks.

Betty shook her head sternly. “No funny business in any shared living spaces, Hollis. I don’t care what you get up to in your room but I don’t want to have to worry about what’s previously been on my table when I eat breakfast.”

“As if you’ve ever used a table for eating in your life,” Laura fired back, pointing at the literary monstrosity in front of Betty with a bowl of cereal and almost spilling half of it over. “I’m pretty sure I saw you eat pasta in a shower once.”

“Hearsay.”

“I got the photos to prove it.”

“And I have video footage of you singing a love song to your Tardis mug after eating one of Natalie’s special brownies, so don’t get cheeky with me, young lady.”

Laura almost choked on her cornflakes. “Love you, too, grandma.”

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. No respect for your elders,” Betty said with about three pens in her mouth and stood up, closing the book with a thud. “So, I’m meeting some people at the library, let’s see if we can’t solve your little… Goethe problem there.” She pointed at Laura’s chest as if it was somehow offensive to her and Laura used her hands to cover herself despite being fully clothed.

“I feel like we’re talking about an Alien growing inside of me,” Laura grumbled into her cornflakes, squirming when Betty tried to pet her head but forgot to drop another two pens before doing just that.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Hollis. Even if I have to cut it out of you.”

“If that’s supposed to be reassuring I think you need to work on your empathy skills, Spielsdorf. That was all Sherlock Holmes kinds of awful.”

“I took a few anatomy courses in undergrad,” Betty shrugged. “I could do it.”

Strangely enough, Laura didn’t doubt that.

* * *

Fiddling with the necklace pendant, watching it catch the sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window, Laura feels a soft kind of hope blooming in her chest as if everything can be alright after all.

(The feeling is strangely familiar but Laura can’t quite say why.)

* * *

 All day she kept playing around with the necklace, the rough texture and sharp edges a source of constant fascination to her fingers. Laura didn’t realize that something was wrong until she excited her favourite coffee-shop, a steaming cup of double espresso with milk and sugar in one hand, and her legs suddenly started moving of their own accord.

Down the streets and away from campus, faster and faster they took her with no care for traffic or other obstacles and her muscles burned, the liquid in her cup spilling over and burning her hand. She tried to talk, to somehow get her mouth to open but it felt stitched up and then glued together, gums molded like liquid plastic with the taste of sulphur on her tongue. Her eyes went wide, insides screaming and she tried to hold on to walls and street signs, even to people who just moved out of her way as if she wasn’t there and Laura tried to breathe, tried to just _breathe_ –

Suddenly, an arm shot out of an alleyway to grab her and pull her with it and the sudden change of direction almost knocked the wind out of Laura. She was pushed against a brick wall, the smell of street and garbage overwhelming her when she could breathe once again. Laura had to blink one, two times before she could focus on the person in front of her.

It was a woman.

She was tall, dark-skinned and elegantly dressed, her blood red gloves the first thing to catch Laura’s attention as she tilted her head to the side and displayed two rows of perfectly straight white teeth that reminded her more of a shark than anything.

“May I?” the strange woman asked, one glove covered hand wrapping itself around the necklace pendant that Laura had been wearing all day. “Such a nasty little thing,” she whispered, her voice almost caressing the words. Laura was about to protest when the pressure around her neck increased and with a tearing sound the necklace gave way.

She almost toppled over.

“There you go,” the woman exclaimed, holding the necklace up with a satisfied grin. “Cursed, you see? One should never put on strange jewelry, moppet, it’s a recipe for disaster. As for this one…” She looked around as if searching for a place to throw it like Laura had seen people do with bombs in movies, before settling on the cup in Laura’s hand.

“Ah…” She took the cup and, tearing off the lid, she dropped the necklace into it. There was a hissing sound that made the woman only smile brighter as she put the lid back on. “All done. You can thank me now, little girl.”

“I- What the holy – _That was my coffee_!”

The woman shrugged. “I had to neutralize it.”

“With _my coffee_?”

“Well, to be honest any kind of liquid would have done the job, but personally I think the caffeine always gives it a nice touch. Not to mention that the atrocity there can scarcely be called coffee.” She scoffed, wiping invisible dust off her fur-trimmed coat. “Even battery acid tastes decent when drowned in milk and sugar.”

Disregarding the stranger’s coffee snobbery, Laura cautiously pointed at the cup as if it could explode any moment. Her limbs still felt weak from the strain they’d been put under as she leaned heavily against the graffiti covered wall. “So, that’s like Voldemort’s horcrux or-“

“In a manner of speaking.”

“So, I should probably thank you for saving my life then?”

The woman let out a long-suffering sigh. “You could. But I feel like you’re going to diffuse into tears any moment now, moppet, and that is not quite my style. So, you can just tell Kitty Kat hello from her sister and we’ll defer this conversation to a more convenient time. Because I have a witch to catch. Or maybe two.”

“ _Kitty Kat_?” Laura blurted out, feeling her vision go blurry.

“Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t figured out that she’s more cat than human some days,” the woman chuckled and then her eyes lit up as she examined the cup again. “Isn’t that interesting!”, she exclaimed, moving her fingers so that Laura could see what she was talking about. “Normally, it should appear on your skin but apparently…”

Right across the coffee shop logo and the hot content warning was a red mark as if stamped on it.

The cartwheel symbol.  

“You are-” Laura just stared at her and the woman's smile stretched impossibly wide across her face before she disappeared with a snap, the coffee cup still in hand.

“-one of them, little Holly girl.”

* * *

It takes her a long time to get her legs moving again and when she finally manages to get home, she just collapses on her bed and sleeps for ten hours straight.

(Laura's dreams are filled with burning pyres and choked lullabies that night as someone presses a Holly crown on her head, the sharp leaves piercing her skin.)

* * *

There was a knock on the living room’s balcony door at half past eight on Sunday evening and it was a testament to all the weird things happening so far that Laura didn’t call the police, but instead grabbed the nearest kitchen spatula, positioned herself next to the curtained door and ripped it open.

“Took you long enough, cupcake,” a familiar voice drawled instead of the squirrel, the potential serial killer or even the life-sized moose she’d been expecting. Laura had to blink one, two times to properly register Carmilla sitting on the balustrade of the tiny balcony, hands buried in the pockets of her leather jacket and a smirk on her face.

“We do have a front door, you know?” Laura deadpanned, spatula still in hand.

“Now that would be _boring_ , cutie,” Carmilla smirked, jumping up and slipping past Laura into the apartment like she owned the place in her shorts and fishnet stockings. “Cute pyjamas by the way.”

“Thank you?” Laura says, fiddling a bit nervously with the ties to said pyjama bottoms that had tiny bows printed all over them. “So, using a fifth-floor balcony as an entrance and half scaring me to death is just for entertainment value then?”

“Not everyone resorts to ice cold rivers to get their kicks,” Carmilla quipped and, taking in the stacks of paper, books and the lone laptop on the couch table next to a plate of cookies, added, “or, you know, investigative journalism.”

“I could have seriously hurt you, you know?”

Carmilla eyed the makeshift weapon from where she was sprawled on Laura’s couch and chuckled. “Doubt that, sweetheart.”

“Next time I’m bringing out the bear spray,” Laura grumbled, pushing combat boots off her favourite pillow and settling in next to her unexpected visitor.

“I’d pay to see that.”

“Yes, well unfortunately I’m not that sort of entertainment no matter how bored you are, so…” She managed to pull up her heavy, five-pound textbook on civil wars in the western world to function as a sort of barricade when Carmilla was suddenly a whole lot closer than before, eyes alight with a sort of mischief that had Laura gulp, thinking about a different night in different lights.

“Oh really?” Carmilla’s voice dropped so low that the hairs on the back of Laura’s neck stood up and she shivered. “There’s nothing I could do to induce you to…”

With a squeak, Laura pushed the girl off her using the heavy tome between them and almost fell off the couch in the process. “Work first, this…,” she gestured between them, cheeks bright red. “Later?”

Looking a bit disgruntled, Carmilla settled back on the other end of the couch, quietly muttering ‘What the frilly hell?’ under her breath when Laura handed her a much smaller textbook and with a shy smile asked, “Quiz me?”

“Are you seriously asking me to help you _study_?”

“You’re the one barging in here unannounced,” Laura said sternly, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Only because you can travel back in time to hand in late essays or study doesn’t mean the rest of us can, so quit whining and help me. I got a quiz tomorrow and you’re an expert in history, right?”

“I feel like you only like me for my brain,” Carmilla complained, eyeing the book like it had somehow grossly insulted her.

“And I’d like you even more for your brain if it figured out who’s been trying to kill me,” Laura said sternly, crossing her arms over her chest. “Your sister sends her regards by the way.”

“You’ve met _Mattie_?”

“Is that her name? Nice woman, very – _interesting_. You know, in the could-eat-your-liver, disembowel-you-if-you-get-a-stain-on-her-Louboutin’s kind of way-”

“Laura…”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a _meeting_ per say as she didn’t introduce herself to me. You know, because she was too busy saving my life and all that jazz.”

“Mattie – saved your life?”

“Yes, does evil cursed necklace ring a bell?” The second attempt at ending her life had made Laura just the tiniest bit tetchy and it showed. “It tried running me into traffic but your sister dropped it into my coffee – which, you know, _rude_ , but-”

“So, it’s not just some creep in a car then,” Carmilla sighed, pulling at her hair in frustration. “Which makes sense as I haven’t had any luck so far in tracing down the driver. So much for superpowers, I guess.”

“But how did you-,” Laura began but quickly cut herself off. “You went back.”

It wasn’t really a question and Carmilla just shrugged. “I waited further up the street because two of me in the same place is like trying to press same-poled magnets together, but yeah…”

“Wow, that’s… How does that even work?”

Carmilla looked uncomfortable. “It just does,” she said, an edge to her voice. “It’s not like consciously deciding on a specific time or date, you know? I think about it and then I’m there, no matter the time or place.” She shrugged. “It’s always been like this.”

“Been like what?”

Carmilla seemed to borrow further into herself. “Like _this_ ,” she bit out.

“And when you go back and change things, a mark appears?” Laura tried to contain her excitement at getting answers directly from the source because the girl didn’t exactly look happy about it.

“It’s not that easy,” Carmilla grumbled, sighing when she glanced at the eager look on Laura’s face. “A lot of the time the change doesn’t even manifest. Take me playing Nancy Drew for example, stuff like that doesn’t even cause a ripple most days because time is less domino game and more languid river – it takes a lot to make it leave its chosen path and I’m still just one person.”

“But if you do change something…”

“Then it usually shows,” Carmilla said, thumbing through the book Laura had given her as if an introduction to European revolutions was a scintillating topic.

If one liked decapitated people that is.

“So… you saving me from drowning should have left a mark then?”

At that, Carmilla looked up, something flashing in dark eyes and it was just the tilt of a head, that drop in volume but Laura nodded, her heart in her throat when she moved one hand to press it against her sternum.

Carmilla looked hungry for a split second, but then she nodded and turned back to the book. “Maybe we should’ve stuck with revising,” she finally admitted quietly and Laura let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe.”

It was quiet from then on. Carmilla kept asking Laura questions in a bored manner, complete with teasing nicknames and small digs at this or that particular historical figure while stealing cookies from the plate. Laura just watched her get caught up in small rants when something irked her, Carmilla’s whole demeanor changing, coming alive and despite the mess they were in, she couldn’t help the sappy smile and the quiet happiness spreading in the space beneath the mark on her chest.

“What?” Carmilla asked when she caught Laura staring, a bit self-consciously rubbing away a few stray crumbs and Laura shook her head, ready to offer a quickly squeaked “Nothing!” when the front door suddenly burst open to make room for a books and bags covered Betty Spielsdorf.

“This is absolute _insanity_ , Hollis. You can’t believe the incompetence of these people – is it really too much to ask them to be prepared and read the freaking material before we have a study session? No! They’re either stressed or their grandmother just died or their bloody dog is having-” Laura almost accurately timed the fifteen seconds it took for Betty to realize there was a third person present in the room and promptly drop her bags.

The girl had always had a flair for dramatics.

“Who is _this_ , Hollis?” her roommate asked, stepping from the tiny entrance hall into the warm lights of the living room, a suspicious frown on her face.

“Betty, Hi!” Laura almost stumbled over her own two feet as she scrambled up to make the introductions. “This is Carmilla, she helped me study for my quiz tomorrow.” A quiet snort could be heard from the girl in question at that but Laura ignored her. “Carmilla, this is Betty. Roommate extraordinaire and my best friend since I started university.”

From the corner of her eye she saw Carmilla eyeing the balcony door and swiftly moved over to close it before the girl could get any ideas.

Carmilla just glared at her and stole another cookie.

“So, you two have been… _studying_ the whole evening?” The sarcasm was practically dripping from Betty’s voice which, in Laura’s opinion, was a bit unfair. She opened her mouth to protest, but didn’t get very far when Betty took a step back, palm pressed against her eyes. “Oh my god, this is a date, right?”

Carmilla and Laura both looked at each other and then quickly away before starting to vehemently protest any such thing but Betty wasn’t even listening to them.

“Bleach!” she cried out, disappearing into the kitchen. “I’m going to need all of the bleach!”

“Is she always so…” Carmilla made several random hand gestures and Laura nodded as if that was a reasonable assessment to make.  

“She’s an… acquired taste, I guess? Wait until she starts reorganizing your drawers because the mess is giving her a headache or she and Mel start ganging up on you. Those two, I swear…”

“I can always just go, you know?” Carmilla said with a raised brow. “Doors or no doors.”

“Yeah, because that would be really inconspicuous.”

“Well, you’re the least inconspicuous person I’ve ever met,” Betty drawled, coming in from the kitchen with a bowl of steaming food before settling in a lone armchair. She raised a brow at Laura. “What? You’re letting her eat the cookies without protest. I’ve been living with you for over a year now and I’m still not allowed.”

Carmilla sniggered when Laura was reduced to flustered stammering at that revelation but quickly started coughing when Betty turned to her, announcing that “Vampirella over there isn’t really all that subtle either. What with the heart eyes and everything” which Laura thought was the most hilarious thing since watching Lafontaine try out their new taser in the middle of an Advanced Psychology class.

“She’s not a vampire though,” Laura was quick to point out, earning herself matching “Duh” expressions from both Betty and Carmilla. But something caught the former’s attention because she proceeded to take in their visitor with an unveiled scrutiny that had Laura shuffle her feet nervously.

“No, she’s not, but there’s just something about her…” Laura could see the exact moment it dawned on Betty and she counted two and two together. “Did you tell her?” she swiveled around to face Laura whose face had turned to stone, mouth unwilling to utter a single word.

“Tell me what?” Carmilla interjected, leaning forward, amusement gone from her face but Betty ignored her.

“Did you tell your time travelling girlfriend that you’ve got that mark on your chest since birth?” she continued instead, a considering, almost worried look on her face and Laura’s throat and fingers burned.  “Did you tell her it’s been growing?”

“Laura?” Carmilla’s voice was low and quiet. Dangerous even. “What the hell is she talking about?”

Laura gulped, fingers tugging at the hem of the button down she was wearing and she felt so _numb_ –

“She’s right,” she said, head spinning as she started unbuttoning her shirt. No one besides her Dad and Betty had seen this before, because she’d been so careful to not let it show, so very, very _careful_. “The mark, it’s been…” She pulled the two halves apart, baring the words beneath her collarbones and the mark spreading on her sternum.

The panther skull surrounded by vines.  

“It’s been there as long as I can remember. But these,” she traced the words. “These are new.”

Disbelief and terror and something… _else_ warred on Carmilla’s face before her jaw set. Laura wanted to reach out, to hold her back, but she couldn’t, was frozen there with her heart on a platter and when Carmilla disappeared with nary a sound, the only thing she heard was Betty dropping her bowl of food.

And the sound of it shattering.

* * *

Carmilla doesn’t come back that night or the next.

Or the next.

Betty’s the quietest Betty can be in her worry and the TV’s blaring news about new marks appearing all over Canada but Laura doesn’t listen.

(She doesn’t sleep either.)


	4. Kitchen Knives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the library is still creepy, Laura more or less kidnaps Kirsch's car and Carmilla thinks that Vodka is a great idea for problem-solving. Also, there are candles. A lot of candles.

**Soundtrack: Otherside - The Red Hot Chili Peppers**

* * *

 

The days passed in numbness for Laura. Long phases of being underwater interspersed with alarm clocks, phone calls and Betty’s concern and she felt cold.

So very, very cold.

Laura tried calling Carmilla but the number didn’t work. There wasn’t even a voicemail for her to leave a message on, to tell her that she was _sorry_ even if sorry didn’t quit match the feeling in her throat.

Because how did you explain the life-long fear ingrained in your bones until it was part of you? How did you explain always covering up, never buying low-cut shirts, never having sex with the lights on, never quite trusting your friend because science was everything to them and telling meant being the shiny new research object, meant the end of being Laura? How did you explain wanting to run, full speed, and then stop before you stumble over the jagged edges of the world, tiptoeing in a minefield in a dance that was routine before you even learned to walk?

How do you explain the guilt at having failed to trust the one person who would’ve understood? The one person that needed to know?

Laura still went to all her classes, still wrote all her essays and drank too much coffee and when Betty questioned the amount of ice-cream she ate, she fixed her with a glare that shut even her usually so unflappable roommate up.  The routine held her up and kept her going and it wasn’t until someone stepped in her way when she tried to leave the library on Friday night that Laura finally woke up.

“Laura Hollis,” a boy drawled, tilting his head sideways in a weird angle that her instantly on edge. He was unfamiliar, with brown hair and eyes, a few years older than her tops. There was a gleam in his eyes that had Laura instinctively step back and reach for the bear spray in her left jacket pocket. “ _Laura, Laura, Laura_ ,” he chided, grinning at his own words. “You’re a rather difficult person to get a hold of, little Laura Hollis.”

Laura bristled at being called ‘ _little’_ – a lifetime of always being the shortest person in the room did that to you. “And why would you want to get a hold of me?” She was proud that her voice didn’t waver as she furtively widened her stance. There was no one around her that she could call for help with the library’s subbasements as deserted as they were and getting almost killed once should’ve really taught her better than this.

“See, that’s a funny thing,” the strange boy grinned, teeth sharp and too bright in the dimly lit hallway full of dust and books. “You’ve been making things rather difficult for me and it’s been quite… what is the word again? _Annoying_.”

“And why is your annoyance my problem exactly?” she asked with all the fierceness she could muster and more bravery than she felt. “Who are you even?”

“Always so curious,” he cooed, taking another step towards her, his movements strangely sluggish. “That’s not a good look on a girl, you know that, right?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“And she’s talking _again_.” He shook his head condescendingly, his neck bending weirdly to one side. “I’d really hoped that you’d at least swallowed enough of that river to shut you up for good, but no, she’s still _babbling_ -”

“You,” it escaped Laura, “You were on that bridge! You were the one trying to run me over, what the holy-” She walked backwards until her back hit one of the shelves and she was trapped.

“And she’s starting to get it.” He looked absolutely delighted at the prospect. “Yes, girlie, I was in that car and it would’ve worked so very nicely even with you jumping off that bridge if my dearest sister hadn’t intervened.”

“Your _sister_?”

“Oh, did Kitty Kat forget to tell you that precious detail? Technicalities, I suppose,” he brushed it off. “She’s always had a weakness for pretty girls.” The guy reached out a hand as if to touch Laura and she bared her teeth at him, all her senses telling her to run, run, _run_ but something about her defiance seemed to amuse him enough to drop it for the moment. “Otherwise, why protect _you_ – a mere girl?”

“Protect me?”

“The bat wing was a nice try to be honest” The boy – Carmilla’s _brother_ \-  grinned, pointing at her wrist. “Unfortunately, it was only designed to divert attention, not to make you completely untraceable, so with enough perseverance…,” he gloated, clearly pleased with himself.

Laura gritted her teeth. “So, you sent me the cursed necklace then, too?”

“Oh, yes. That would’ve been so very entertaining, too. Do you know how messy car accidents are? All that blood and intestines? In Mexico, there’s a whole group of paparazzi charged with taking pictures of gruesome deaths and I can tell you it’s just delightfully-”

“But then your other sister intervened,” Laura finished the sentence for him, her stomach revolting at the pictures he was painting with his words. “Sounds to me like your family isn’t all that fond of you.”

“Well, they will be.” He put a hand on the shelve next to her and Laura felt her skin boiling. “I will show them, little dolly.”

“Show them what exactly?”

“What I can do.” He stepped even closer and the smell of something overtly sweet and _rotting_ assaulted her and made her gag. “It’s really quite unfortunate that in order for me to do just that, you must die, Miss Hollis. Sadly, there’s just no way around it. If you only hadn’t been so curious and gotten involved in all of this… But you know what they say…”

Laura saw something silver and sharp gleam in her periphery. A knife she thought, he has a _knife_. She forced herself to stay calm and grip the spray can tighter.

“Curiosity has _always_ killed the cat.”

He lunged for her, but Laura was faster, years of self-defence classes ingrained in her movements and she punched him in the throat and simultaneously hit him with the bear spray right in his eyes. Her attacker reeled back, pained howls sounded through the empty hallways as he tried to rub the acidic spray out of his eyes and Laura used his distraction to knock the knife out of his hand.

“And _satisfaction_ brought it back,” Laura hissed and, picking up the discarded knife, she took off running.

* * *

Laura feels like she’s in a spy movie.

Always looking over her shoulder, she sees the boy’s face and a hundred more like him everywhere in the crowd and she’s painfully aware of the stolen knife burning a hole through the pocket of her jacket.

She arrives at Kirsch’s place at two in the morning and it’s probably due to his decidedly not quite awake state that he hands her the keys to his car without discussion. She’s a long way from Toronto when the sun climbs across the mountains, a memorized address leading her somewhere she’s never been to before and hope burning brightly in her chest.

(Laura tries not to think about the knife.)

* * *

The cabin was dark when Laura arrived, the forest's silence eerie after the roaring of the engine and when she tried the door, it wasn't even locked. The familiar smell of ink and books enveloped her when she finally entered and it stitched up her throat with surgeon’s hands.

Whatever she’d been expecting here, it wasn’t this.

The cabin was small and cozy, consisting of just one main room with a kitchen in one corner and a door that probably lead to a bathroom in the other. A large couch took up most of the space, conveniently placed in front of the fire place with a multitude of blankets and pillows piled on top of it. The walls were covered in shelves overladen with books of any size and sort. Poetry, philosophy, medical textbooks, science-fiction from the 18th century as well as fairy-tales and photography books – they were all scattered across every available surface, interspersed with large candles and tea lights. Strange symbols and crystals were strung up in front of every window, the morning light casting foreign shadows and coloured flecks of light across the room.

Laura felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Because this was a _home_. This was Carmilla’s home, this cabin in the woods and it suddenly felt like an invasion to be here. But she was exhausted, drained to the bone and she just needed to _talk_ to Carmilla.

So, Laura took off her shoes and pants and curled up in one corner of the couch under a pile of blankets. Her foot bumped against something hard beneath the covers and Laura jerked back, thinking knives and poison but it turned out to be just a photo album. An album containing over a hundred photos depicting the same forest scene over and over again and it wasn't until she discovered the dates written neatly in one corner of every picture that Laura understood the album's title.

_Continuation._

There was a sense of profound loneliness about the picuture and its slowly changing landscape. It tugged at the edge of Laura's mind but she couldn't quite name it as her tired mind sowly overwhelmed her. She didn’t mean to fall asleep as quickly as she did and when she woke up, it was to the sound of glass shattering and someone cursing under their breath.

“Shit, shit, goddamn it… fucking miserable piece of shit throwing a motherfucking knife at me, who the fuck does he think he – oh fuck, stop fucking _bleeding_ , I can’t – ouch, shit, this is-”

“Carm?” Laura asked sleepily, still half caught in strange dreams about fireworks and veils, and rubbed her eyes as she sat up, blonde hair a messy halo around her head.  

The cursing ceased abruptly.

“Who _the_ _fuck_ are you and what the frilly hell are you doing here?” Carmilla’s voice was dangerously low and Laura knew that she was curling her hands into fists right about now.

“Rude,” she chided her, slipping off the blankets and not caring that she was only wearing an oversized shirt over her underwear. She blinked at Carmilla, noting that something about her was different. Her hair reached just below her shoulders and was cut into bangs, the clothing different – high waist shorts and thigh highs paired with a see-through blouse – and she looked so very, very _young_.  

“I’m asking you what you are-“ Carmilla started again, brow furrowing and Laura swallowed, figuring that this Carmilla was indeed much younger, perhaps from years before she had met her.

“I’m Laura and you gave me the address, so stop snarling and-,” she began because if her theory was correct, this was in fact their first meeting for Carmilla. She let her eyes rove over the girl’s face, pain-laced fury and hunched over posture and it wasn’t until she blinked again that she saw the blood staining her blouse.

“You’re _hurt_ ,” she interrupted whatever hissed curse this Carmilla was ready to bite out. Disregarding the girl’s warning growl, she stepped closer, prodding at her arm until she let her examine the wound.  

“Holy Hufflepuff, what happened?” Laura asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice as she tried to see the _what_ , _where_ and _how deep_ through the stained fabric, but it was impossible to make out much of anything because of the sheer amount of black-blue blood.

“Idiot tried to stab me,” Carmilla muttered, eyeing Laura with suspicion. “And in case you didn’t notice, sweetheart. This kind of fucking hurts and I have no idea who the bleeding hell you are, so if you don’t want me to tear out your spine, could you please-”

Laura shot her a chiding look before pushing past her towards the small bathroom to find a first-aid kid of some kind. Her heart beat a lot easier when she actually found one in the cupboard beneath the sink behind an inordinate amount of liquid eyeliner flasks.

When she came back into the main room, Carmilla was leaning heavily against the tiny kitchen counter, pouring what looked like vodka into a water glass and almost missing it because her hand was trembling so much.

“Are you _kidding me_?” Laura exclaimed, rushing forward to knock the bottle out of Carmilla’s hand and pour all its contents down the sink. “You’re bleeding, you stupid vampire. Do you really think now’s the time to get wasted?”

“Numbs the pain though, darling,” Carmilla grins, teeth stained blue on the edges as if she’d been coughing up blood. “And vampire? Really?”

“Well, _grumpy space-time anomaly_ was a bit of a mouthful,” Laura snapped back, pushing Carmilla until she was sitting on the counter, head leaned back against the cupboards with a pained hiss. Carefully, she unbuttoned Carmilla’s shirt and pushed it off her shoulders, leaving her in just a plain black bra.

“Oh, buy me a drink first, cutie,” the girl quipped despite the pain she had to be in when Laura started cleaning up the blood. The wound itself wasn’t that deep and Laura prayed to any deity currently listening that Laf’s proposed immortality extended to some kind of supernatural healing ability so that cleaning and dressing it would be enough.

Her fingers lingered on the white bandage long after she’d wrapped it up, eyes flickering over bare skin to check for other injuries and when she met the other girl’s eyes, Carmilla was staring right back at her.

“It was a cursed knife,” she finally said. “Any other injury would’ve been healed by the time I made it here but wounds like this one… they take longer.”

Laura nodded in the dim daylight, filtered by the clouds and the forest surrounding the cabin. “Who did this?”

Carmilla scoffed, the movement causing her to jolt when pain hit her once again. “Will,” she pressed out, “Who else? The little weasel thought it great fun to use me as target practice and then drain me just because I wasn’t careful enough to not step into that damn circle. Fucking _sadistic piece of-_ ”

“Will - your brother?”

“That’s what he likes to call himself.” Laura saw the fury in Carmilla’s eyes, the bottomless disdain. “A cockroach, that’s what he is. Fancies himself one of us but he’s no more than a grave robber, a thief that uses spells and violence to steal time, drinking our blood because he-“ She coughed at that and Laura remembered her blood-stained teeth and shushed her.

“It’s okay, Carm,” she whispered and the girl went rigid at the sound. “You’re safe here now.” Laura smoothed her own blue-stained hands over the bare thighs between shorts and stockings, the bandaged waist, the sides of her chest and up over arms before resting on her shoulders, hearing and feeling their hearts beating in sync. Carmilla took in a shuddering breath, pupils blown wide as she simply stared at Laura.

„ _So, was our touch half as sacred as I’ve made it seem_?” she whispered, the quote unfamiliar, as she took Laura’s hand, grazing her finger tips as if searching for something. “ _Or just another fabrication of a half-dream?_ ”

Her expression was one of deep unsettlement and that tinge of sadness did Laura in.

“Carm…” Slowly, carefully as not to cause more pain, Laura pulled the girl down towards her, fingers curled around her neck and in her hair, something flaring in her chest when the girl complied. She pressed her lips against Carmilla’s for a kiss that tasted like ink and the sharp tang of alcohol, more a promise than anything.

“ _And time can be such a funny_ thing,” she heard her murmur in the blueish light of the cabin. “ _Always moving to the future, glorifying the past and amplifying the pain in frames and glass (1)_.”

* * *

 

After past Carmilla disappears, still wide-eyed and searching, Laura falls asleep curled up on the couch, skin stained black-blue and she feels at peace for the first time in weeks, the burning longing momentarily dulled.

(When she wakes up, the ink stains are gone, replaced with even more words spreading down the insides of her arms.

There’s another girl in the room.)

* * *

Carmilla was sitting on the other end of the couch when Laura woke up sometime in the evening, the room illuminated by a myriad of lit candles. She took one look at leather pants, corset and ink-free hands to know that she was dealing with this time’s Carmilla. Her dark hair was messy, faint red bruises dotting her neck and Laura blushed at the memory, instinctively knowing from where Carmilla had come.

The girl looked almost nervous. Her face was carefully blank, but she’d pulled her knees to her chest, bare feet digging into the cushions and eyes tracking everyone of Laura’s movements as she slowly blinked at the intruder.

“Liebling,” Carmilla whispered, voice raspy and Laura felt something inside her choke up. But dusk had thrown its weight over her and moving seemed like an impossibility.

“When I saw you here for the first time I thought that I had gone mad,” Carmilla continued and she suddenly looked old and weary. “You… you _knew_ me. Knew my name and what I was and you were _in my home_ and you were real. _”_

Laura watched her, unable to look away and there was fear and anger and the helplessness of inevitability warring in her chest, a tenderness in her throat and fingers that she did not dare name.

“I drowned for almost seventy years,” Carmilla said almost lightly and the pain was right there, was tangible.  “It’s hard to kill someone like me. We are time itself. We’re relative, we’re unmoving and ever-changing. We are humanity’s heartbeat, it’s hymn, it’s lifeline. We do not _die_.”

She looked shaken for a moment and Laura couldn’t help but reach out despite her own mess of a heart and tangle her fingers with Carmilla’s as she pulled her down to lie next to her.

“You were like a hallucination, a creature of Will’s doing or a half dream from underwater that I faintly remembered but when you kissed me… I thought that it was a madness I’d gladly take.”

They’re quiet for a long time, their heartbeats thumping in rhythm in this still night. When Carmilla whispers “I’m sorry for leaving”, Laura finally turns to face her.

“According to my Dad,” she said quietly, throat burning and eyes focused on Carmilla, “the mark’s been there since my birth. At first, it looked like a regular beauty mark, a small black dot in the middle of my chest but then over the years it started to grow. My parents were so scared,” she whispered. “They didn’t know what to do or who to ask because they were afraid that people would hunt me down, so they covered it up. But then the accident happened.”

“The one where I-“

Laura nodded, smile a bit tremulous. “When I got out of the hospital and my father took off the bandages – he almost had a heart attack. Because the vines had opened to envelop what looked like an animal skull.”

It felt like they both took in a shuddering breath at the same time and Laura let her fingers skim over Carmilla’s hairline, smiling softly.

“So, I can’t really compete with you know years of I don’t know… pining or something-”

“I did not _pine_ -”

“And I can’t really tell you what any of this means, but in a strange, _really_ like to ask the universe why kind of way, it’s always been you.” She smiled at Carmilla who suddenly looked a bit flustered.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Anyway,” Laura rolled her eyes and reached for her coat, the movement startling Carmilla, and pulled out the knife that the guy in the library – _Will_ – had tried to stab her with and one look at Carmilla’s blanching, coldly furious face told her everything she needed to know.

“We need to talk.”

* * *

She kisses her there, in candlelight, because that's what they do in the stories and sometimes, in the quiet moments, this feels just like a story. Something prewritten and already decided like the mark on her chest and the words on her skin and it makes her want to revolt. But then Carmilla smiles at her and it's the most real thing she can think of.

(So Laura kisses her).

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Carmilla quotes La Dispute's song "The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit" here (the song is more or less about hooking up). It's a post-hardcore band so while that's not for everyone, they have lyrics that read like poetry so definitely check that out - it's just the type of music that I think Carmilla would be really into (and i'm the kind of nerd that has playlists for characters, ok?) Also, any lyrics about time are somehow really bloody hilarious to me when writing a time travel story.


	5. Straight Shots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are stories to tell, Laura threatens Carmilla with a spoon (again) and Carmilla sets things on fire. Okay, candles. She sets candles on fire.

**Soundtrack: I Really Want You - James Blunt**

* * *

 

“I was born Mircalla, daughter of the Count Karnstein in Styria, Austria, in 1680.”

Carmilla’s voice was distant but calm, caught somewhere in the recital of a story that was more routine than memory by now as she sat on the kitchen counter, watching Laura chop onions for their impromptu dinner. There wasn’t much in terms of groceries in this kitchen, but Laura had found some spaghetti and a few canned tomatoes that would have to do for a sauce.

“The first time I disappeared was on my fourth birthday. My governess had tried putting me into this contraption called a dress which I detested so I took off running in my nightgown. Next thing I knew, I was in this beautiful garden full of flowers and trees and there were other children there, dressed very differently from what I was used to. They had a basket full of food and invited me to join their picnic, probably thinking I was the neighbour’s child.” Carmilla chuckled. “When I came back that evening, I was dirty and sunburnt and possibly the happiest I had ever been but my family, they were… horrified to say the least”

Laura shot her a smile as she dropped the onions in the pan. There’d been no need for matches to light the gas on the stove because apparently, her time travelling friend also possessed a gift for pyrokinesis – one she’d apparently picked up from a couple of witches across the centuries and forgotten to mention until now. That revelation had been followed by a full five minutes of Laura stomping around the room, ranting about how it wasn’t _fair_ and why didn’t she tell her earlier, this was so _awesome_. Carmilla had just picked at her nails and when Laura had to pause to actually _breathe_ , she’d simply arched a brow, asking her how she’d thought she’d lit all those bloody candles in the first place.

Which – fair point.

 “My governess who’d seen me disappear into thin air quit that same evening – I think my father had her killed later when she refused monetary inducements to keep quiet.” Carmilla continued, pulling up one leg to rest her cheek against it. She’d thrown a flannel shirt over her corset for which Laura was infinitesimally grateful. “My mother was hysteric and refused to see me and my father threatened the servants into compliance as they locked me up in my room. Travellers were feared more than revered back then and to my parents, I was only of value as a potential bargaining chip, chattel to be traded. But with my… infliction I was damaged goods at best and a social suicide for my family if word got out.”

“And for you?”

“For me?” Carmilla smiled softly, the red-orange light casting warmth on paper cheeks. “For me it was a freedom I never knew I could have. The wide world it… opened before me as it had never been before and they tried sedating me, tried locking me up. But the more they tried, the more I wanted to just… _get out_. And there was no lock and no medication strong enough to contain me because time and space were my friend, so out I went. As a child, I longed for warm places, for other children to play with but as I got older, it was knowledge that drew me in. Books that had not been written yet, ideas that were centuries away from being thought - I saw this new world awaken in the span of mere years and it it took my breath away.”

Carmilla’s eyes lit up at the words, her excitement catching before she shook her head as if amused by her own enthusiasm. “I got careless,” she said after a while. “I felt invincible because despite all my father’s efforts, he couldn’t contain me, couldn’t force me to be his polite, subservient daughter who spent her days reading novels and doing embroidery. So, when he introduced me to my fiancé, the son of the Baron Vordenberg, I just laughed at him. I ridiculed him because he was an arrogant fool of a man who wanted a piece of furniture rather than a wife and I told him that I’d probably bedded more women at this point than he’d ever laid eyes on.”

Laura almost choked on her spoon full of tomato sauce. “How old were you?” she gasped, hastily gulping down a glass of water to ease the burn on her tongue.

“Seventeen?”

“Seventeen and you already had game?” she teased and Carmilla turned her head to face her, a glint in her eyes as she leaned in closer to Laura.

“Doubt me?”

Laura rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help the blush. “Come on, continue with the story, lady killer.”

“As my fair maiden commands.” Carmilla grinned, evading the dripping spoon that Laura threateningly waved in her direction. “As you can imagine, neither the Baron’s son nor my father were particularly thrilled with my announcement, but I didn’t care. I had just discovered Bouvoir and Camus and I was occupied with trying to meet them at Café de Flore. Which proved to be quite difficult as travelling this way is not an exact science and I’d previously never been to Paris so I had no idea what to picture – What?” Carmilla asked a bit flustered when she caught sight of Laura’s smile.

“Nothing,” she assured her, shaking her head in amusement “You’re just very, very… _cute_ when you get all distracted like that.”

“I’m not _cute_!”

“Like a cat with a ball of yarn,” Laura deadpanned and this time it was Carmilla who threatened her with the cutlery.

“Okay, so your father wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows with you despoiling people’s virtues… what happened next?”

“Well, I forgot about it for the most part… until the eve of my 18th birthday.” Carmilla frowned and Laura knew that they’d reached the difficult part of the story. “Contrary to me, Vordenberg junior hadn’t forgotten about his humiliation and he was desperate for revenge. He rallied a mob and with the help of a witch and my father he lured me into a trap at my birthday ball. The witch had drawn a pentagram into the lawn in front of the castle, one that was impossible to see in the dark and with the promise of fireworks, my father lead me there.”

Carmilla closed her eyes, head falling back against the cupboards. “The people were already gathered there, carrying… torches and pitchforks… and drunk on the prospect of burning evil. Vordenberg junior carried a sword that was rumoured to have been handed to him by an angel of the Lord to purify the world and I was trapped. I couldn’t move, couldn’t jump into another time or place because of the pentagram and the runes engraved there. My clothes were already burning, the chants echoing in my ear as my senses clouded by the smoke began to leave me when suddenly, the witch revealed herself. Only, she wasn’t really a witch.” Carmilla laughed and it was a ragged, a bitter sound. “She was a traveller just like me, the oldest one of us and she’s been revered as a god and the devil across time and cultures. She’s the most powerful one of us all, she-”

“Who is she?”

Carmilla dragged air into her lungs, Laura could hear them expanding. “Mother,” she whispered so lowly as if she was afraid she might hear her. “I only know her as mother.”

“Mother… Her symbol is the crow, right?”

“How do you know that?”

“Research?” Laura shrugged, pressing the spoon to Carmilla’s lips, hoping that the taste of something real might chase away the demons for a second. “I was curious and my friend Laf said the crow symbol was the oldest one there is.”

Slowly, Carmilla nodded, licking sauce of her lips. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s her mark. While I was burning, she stepped out of the crowd and with a snap of her fingers the world stood still. She offered me a deal - My freedom in exchange for unquestioning worship.”

“And you took it.”

Carmilla nodded. “Killed a few of the people there, too,” she said and Laura felt her insides rebel. To love a monster is to kiss their lips despite the blood, she thought, wondering when love had come to play in this game.

“Mother applauded my bloodlust and burnt and bloodied I went with her. She showed me the world in context, not just glimpses of other people’s lives and we danced in Versailles and witnessed feasts and revolutions and for a long while I thought I was in fact _free_. And then I met Ell.”

“Ell?”

Carmilla put the spaghetti into the boiling pot of water, stirring it before trying to sample a bit more of the tomato sauce to Laura’s displeasure. “The year was 1872 and we’d just come back to Styria for the first time in over a century, the first time since my presumed death. I was understandably reluctant, preferring to stay in New York, but Maman insisted. Her quest was always about power and over the millennia she’s developed an understanding for time and where it can be manipulated that is almost impossible to comprehend. Even now, after more than three centuries I can scarcely predict her next movements.”

Carmilla took a deep breath and Laura saw her fingers twitch anxiously. “For some reason, she wanted me to befriend the daughter of an Austrian aristocrat as that was usually my job - act as a lure, befriend someone, gather information, that sort of thing. But Ell, she… she was different. We soon became friends and it wasn’t… this time it wasn’t a lie. So, when Maman told me she needed for Ell to die to set events in motion, I- I couldn’t do it. So, instead I made preparations and convinced Ell to run away with me but when the time came for us to meet – Mother showed up.”

Carmilla just swallowed, the sound of their food cooking the only noise in the room.

“She told Ell what I was, showed her the ink on my fingers and in my veins and Ell, she – she thought me to be a monster. So, Mother killed her in front of me, burned her like Vordenberg tried to burn me and-”

Laura reached out to squeeze Carmilla’s thigh, not knowing what to say.

“As punishment,” the other girl continued, her eyes glazed and distant. “Maman sealed me into that moment. She wrapped time around me, halted space and movement and confined me to that circle of runes so that I could live and relive Ell’s death until the end of the world.”

A beat.

“Only the end of the world as we knew it came sooner than expected,” Carmilla whispered hoarsely, staring at Laura’s face as if she didn’t quite see her. “For over seventy years I watched my love die and die all over again. I watched her smile, lose faith and then her life in rapid succession and I tried so often to just… _die_. But I couldn’t, because I was time and time was trapping me, drowning me and I lost track of it, lost track of _myself_ and then-”

She breathed in.

“Then the war happened. The last great war of the modern world and with it all these horrors. So many of us travelled to this point in time, to those years to somehow save all these people. They couldn’t do much because time doesn’t move easily. But they tried and all this movement, it shook the fabric, minimally perhaps but it was enough to loosen the knot and release me. And when I woke up to silence, it was the silence of the dead, the acoustic shock after the bombs.”

Carmilla wiped away the tears from Laura’s cheek, examining them with something akin to wonder. And when Laura smiled, it was a tentative, wavering smile that quickly gave way to panic when she caught the smell of something burning.

“Mother found me in Paris in the 1950s and thought my punishment fulfilled,” Carmilla continued after Laura had saved their meal from burning. “So, she took me back in and the games began anew.”

“So, you just… went back to her?”

“I wasn’t of much use to her, anyway,” Carmilla shrugged. “All these years sealed in that circle with Ell’s pain in my ears – they made me forget to care. People, humanity, the world – I stopped caring about any of it. And if there’s one thing essential to changing time, it’s caring about what you’re changing.”

Laura turned off the stove and drained the spaghetti. “But you saved me,” she protested, taking the plates from Carmilla to fill them with food. “So, you’re not… apathetic anymore, right?”

Carmilla’s smile was slow to spread and even then, it was cautious. “No,” she whispered. “Not since you, cupcake.”

* * *

Dinner is a quiet affair with small smiles and touches.

Because how do you respond to a revelation that weighs heavier than three words whispered between lungs? Being someone’s reason for caring when you barely manage to feed yourself properly most days? Because they have no idea what this means, the words that scribble themselves on Laura’s skin, the pull at the edge of her mind that only lessens when Carmilla is close. So, when they’re curled up on the couch later on, hands and thighs and bodies touching, Laura just –

Stops resisting.

This time there’s none of that forest fire like urgency, no drunken haze and smoke filled lungs. When Carmilla pulls Laura’s shirt over her head and presses her back down against the couch, she just stares at the mark on her chest for a long while until Laura squirms. Carmilla huffs out a laugh, pressing a quick kiss to the dark lines before taking off the corset she’s still wearing. Laura catches her in a kiss, this girl with skin like paper in candlelight before Carmilla moves down, teeth skimming the line of her underwear, sucking a series of hickeys into the insides of her left thigh.

(And as she falls, Laura forgets to breathe.)

* * *

“Can I see it?”, Carmilla whispered into Laura’s neck sometime later when they were curled up on the couch and Laura, still drowsy from her nap, just nodded and turned to lay on her back, not bothering to cover herself up.

“The mark grew again after that... night at the club,” she said as Carmilla sat up, still naked as they hadn’t bothered to get dressed. There were red marks on her neck and chest and Laura knew that at least half of them were from a different night. “And the words appeared the morning after you fished me out of that river. First there was the ink all over my body which, you know, made me look like a misshapen Jackson Pollock and then it seemed to just kind of _sink in_. The next morning, all these strange words appeared that I couldn’t make any sense of and after last night,” she held up her arms and the words spreading down the insides until they mixed with the numbers written around her wrists, the phone number and the coordinates. “These showed up and now I look like advertisement for a local tattoo parlour. My father is _so_ going to kill me.”

“You look very badass, creampuff,” Carmilla teased her when she started pouting. “So, these happened after you patched past-me up?”

“Yeah.” Laura gazed at Carmilla. “That was our first meeting for you, right?” The girl nodded silently and Laura shivered when she began tracing the lines of the mark, the words spreading above it. “Where did you come from? Because you were in an… exceptionally bad mood that day.”

“Early 2000s,” Carmilla answered, shooting Laura a dirty look. “And I’d just gotten stabbed so I’m sorry for not being all gracious about finding a stranger in my bed. No matter how pretty.”

“I think I got the message after you threatened to tear out my spine - which, side note – I don’t think you could have pulled off, seeing as you were bleeding all over the upholstery at the time.”

“Next time I’ll promise to consult Emily Post on proper etiquette beforehand, alright?” Carmilla said a bit tersely, pinching Laura in the side. “This place is enforced so no one should’ve been able to get in here in the first place, except you-”

“Got in!” Laura yelped, squirming and grinning. “I’m feeling all kinds of super special now.”

“Must’ve been the invitation,” Carmilla grumbled, her hand travelling lower to brush against the curve of one breast and Laura’s breath hitched.

“What does it say?”, Laura asked, pushing herself up on her elbows. “Betty said it was… old-fashioned German written in some kind of old _script._ She couldn’t make out much except for a few words which - not scary at all.”

“ _Das Herz der Reisenden stahl einst die Nacht_ ,” Carmilla whispered instead of replying, her voice taking on a harder, more formal edge as her hands splashed across Laura’s side, “ _und hat es still und heimlich, dem Sonnenlicht zum Geschenk gemacht. Die Sonne küsste den Mond mit goldenen Händen, und tauchte Schwarz zu Blau, die Dunkelheit zum Tag, auf dass sie Ewigkeit in Zeiten fänden_.”

“What does that mean?”

Carmilla swallowed, the tips of her hair, inky blue, trailing over Laura’s skin as she leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “ _The traveller's heart was once stolen by the night and quietly, stealthily gifted to sunlight. The sun herself kissed the moon with golden fingers and turned black to blue, made dark turn day so that they’ll find eternity in time’s endless rays_.”

Laura let out a slightly choked laughter. “Still confused here.”

“It’s a snippet of a poem I wrote when I was very young,” Carmilla said quietly, pulling back and pushing wild curls back behind her ear. “That’s why it’s written so strangely.”

“And the rest of it?” Laura lifted her arms and let Carmilla drag her into a sitting position, their legs and the blanket tangled between them.  

“A quote from Camus on happiness,” Carmilla said tipping against a few lines written in French at the crook of her elbow, “and here the coordinates to this place – you can wash them off now, sweetheart-”

Laura stuck her tongue out at her and playfully bit after the hand closest to her.

“-the Karnstein family motto, complete with yes, the crest; a Kipling quote-”

“So, I’m a life-sized tumblr blog then?”

“And here-” Carmilla faltered, her fingers trembling, hummingbird, against the soft skin of Laura’s left inner forearm where a group of strange symbols formed a circle. “These are the runes she used to trap me.”

Laura almost jolted back in an effort to retract her arm, but Carmilla didn’t let go as if forcing herself to look at the marks. “But then why-“

“I don’t know.”

“It’s _on my arm_.”

“Evidently.”

“Written in _your ink_.” 

“Seems to be.”

“That is just…” Laura let out a breath. “ _Awesome_.”

“Well, it seems like all my deep dark secrets write themselves on your skin, so I’m not all that happy about it either.”

“Is that why Will wants to kill me?”

“Indirectly?” Carmilla shrugged, moving closer so that she could trace the ink on Laura’s skin from one arm, over her chest and then back down the other. “I think it’s got more to do with the fact that he’s become dispensable. Will, he- He was human once. Mother picked him up in the trenches of France in World War I and taught him all about witchcraft since she needed a lackey. He’s a vulture, a parasite and the only thing keeping him alive is the fact that mother needs him to do the dirty work for her.”

“But with you not being all cool and disaffected-”

“She no longer has any use for him and without her feeding him or allowing him to feed on me…”

“He dies.” Laura swallowed. “So, the walking zombie’s plan is to kill me to turn you back into a refrigerator in leather pants so that he can keep on eating – I don’t know – _brains_ , probably. That is just… wonderful. Disgusting but… wonderful”

“Laura…” Carmilla nudged her knee with her own. “He’s not going to kill you, okay?”

“Easy for you to say, Miss I’m-three-hundred-years-old-and-practically-immortal,” Laura scoffed, making Carmilla laugh.

“Well, considering he’s not our greatest problem right now, it’s not the little weasel we should worry about.”

“You mean…”

Carmilla sighed. “Mother.”

“Your big bad, possibly megalomaniac, older than any of us can comprehend boss with the disregard for human life - mother?”

“If there’s another one I’d really like to know, cupcake.”

“So… what does she want? Maybe we can talk it out? Find a compromise?” Carmilla’s incredulous stare at Laura’s suggestions had her visibly deflate. “What can we do then?”

“Nothing.” Carmilla shrugged. “She wants me and she always gets what she wants.”

“Sounds like deep-rooted childhood trauma to me. Has anyone ever denied her anything?”

“Yes. I did and she sentenced me to seventy years in hell for that. So no, family therapy is out of the question, Freud.”

Laura pulled the blanket to her chest.  “So, any other suggestions, because I don’t really want to die before I finish my degree, you know?”

“You’re not going to die, cupcake,” Carmilla said, pulling her into her lap, skin sliding against skin and Laura shivered. “You’re only of value to Mother if you’re alive. No, she’s going to use you as blackmail to ensure my compliance. That’s what she threatened me with a long time ago. _There will be a girl and she will make you care_ , Mother said. _And when you do_ , _I will find you, my glittering girl and you will serve me twice as well as before_.”

“Because you care,” Laura finished for her, fingers buried in midnight blue curls and Carmilla nodded.

“Because I care.”

* * *

They fall asleep right there, minds filled with questions and uncertainties except for the fact that they’re both here and that they’re breathing and Laura has never thought that she’d get to have Carmilla like this, soft and pliant and _human_ , as she slept curled up like a cat on the couch between a myriad of pillows, her lips slightly parted.

But Laura can’t sleep, her mind whirring as she traces words and swirls on Carmilla’s bare skin and in the gray light the runes on her left arm look stark against her skin.

(When morning comes, Laura has a plan).


	6. Cracked Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are garden gnomes, Laura has terrible, terrible friends and Carmilla contemplates the benefits to torture. Also, Mattie brings presents and Perry isn't happy about it.

**Soundtrack: Road Trippin' - The Red Hot Chili Peppers**

* * *

 When Laura opened the door to her apartment around lunchtime the next day, she didn’t get much further than about three steps into the hallway before a full-on avalanche descended upon her. She could make out a mop of blonde hair and some limbs before she was swept up in a hug that threatened to break a few of her ribs.

“Betty, what in Merlin’s-”

“You’re back!” her visibly distraught roommate cried out before stepping back and composing herself. “Where the fuck have you been, Hollis?” she asked, righting her glasses with jittery fingers. “Nobody has seen you since Friday, your phone doesn’t work and it’s been stressing me the hell out. So your explanation better be good because it’s been affecting my study time.”

“I missed you, too, Betty Wan-Kenobi.”

“Yeah, yeah, still not an excuse,” Betty brushed her off, dragging her towards the living room where, from the look of it, almost their entire circle of friends was assembled.

“Oh good, you’re all here,” Laura breathed out when she caught sight of Kirsch on their couch and she handed him back his car keys with an apologetic smile. Mel leaned against the balcony door, the usual disgruntled expression on her face as she played around with what looked like an actual bow and arrows and Laf sat cross-legged on the floor, a heap of papers and books surrounding them. When Laura stepped into the room they blinked at her over them rim of a pair of old-fashioned glasses for a second before smiling.

“Frosh, you’re back!” they grinned. “Tall and neurotic over there has been splitting her hair ends from worrying about your possibly fatal demise.”

“I did no such thing,” Betty protested, sounding almost affronted as she crossed her arms over her chest in a huff. “And my hair is flawless.”

“Any more of your whining and you’d have been the apple in a William Tell reimagining, frizzy hair or no frizzy hair,” Mel scoffed, raising her bow for emphasis. “Good to see you back, Hollis, even just so that your annoying roommate finally shuts up.”

“Tall nerd hottie cares about you very much, little nerd hottie,” Kirsch said very seriously. “She even threatened to cut off police bros crown jewels when he said you were probably off partying which, you know, not cool, bro.”

“It’s was my civic duty to report a missing person!” Betty exclaimed. “It’s not my fault that the police thinks they have better things to do than look for a missing college student on a Saturday night. What was I supposed to do - just sit here twiddling my thumbs?”

“So instead you decided to harass the rest of us into forming rescue groups? Very mature, Spielsdorf.”

“Not ten minutes ago you were all ready to tear the city apart looking for her, Robin Hood, so don’t act like I’m the only one who was-”

“Worried?” Laura asked, touched that her roommate and the rest of her friends cared so much that they were all assembled here on a Sunday afternoon.

Betty huffed again. “As if.”

“It’s okay to have feelings you know,” Laura teased her. “Nobody is an island and all that.”

“Don’t get cheeky with me, Hollis. I’m not in the mood.”

“As if that’s news,” Mel grumbled but before Betty could gear up to protest, Lafontaine had disentangled themselves from their research and stood up, quickly stepping up to Laura and between the two brewing war parties.

“Yes, cute as this whole disturbing flirting thing is, personally I’d really like to know what Laura here’s been up to.”

“Laf, yes. Hi,” Laura waved awkwardly as everyone assembled turned to watch her curiously. Even Perry’s shock of red curls was visible from the kitchen entrance. “That’s a funny thing actually because remember when I asked you-”

A sudden knock on the balcony door thankfully interrupted that line of interrogation. Laura almost snorted when she caught sight of Carmilla wearing what looked like a cape, standing on their balcony between a few potted plants and a cheerily smiling garden gnome and looking about as happy as if she’d just been subjected to a round of dental surgery.

“Thank Dumbledore, you’re here!” Laura cried out and rushed over to open the door.

Carmilla just arched a brow at her. “Thanks for the rescue. Any longer and that gnome over there would have started talking.”

“His name is Herbert, okay? And we don’t insult Herbert.”

“Who said anything about insulting?” Carmilla smirked. “Accidentally dropping him from the balcony is much more my style.”

“That’s not even-” Laura started but was interrupted by Betty.

“What’s vampirella doing here?” her roommate yelled from the living room where the rest of their friends was still waiting. “And why is she threatening Herbert?”

“Okay, so questionable attitudes towards cute garden decoration aside-”

“If you think that thing’s cute, you need to review the concept,” Carmilla informed her as she let Laura drag her into the living room where she just glared at the group of people assembled there. Everyone seemed to collectively shrink back at her glower and Kirsch even dropped his mug, spilling tea all over the floor.

“Be nice, Carm,” Laura hissed into Carmilla’s ear. “We talked about this, remember?”

“No, _you_ talked about this,” Carmilla said a bit sullenly. “I repeatedly told you that I think confiding in a bunch of lackwits is the stupidest idea you ever had. And you did jump from a bridge once, cupcake.”

“Laura Eileen Hollis!” Betty had thrown a bunch of towels on the floor to soak up the spilled tea and was now glaring at Laura as Perry puttered around behind her, shaking her head at the mess. “Did you pick urban swimming as a new hobby?”

“I told you not to mention that,” Laura hissed but Carmilla just rolled her eyes, clearly unimpressed.

“These are your friends,” she said, marching over to the couch and apparently looking so scary that Kirsch fled to the other end, leaving enough space for Carmilla to drop herself on and snatch up the plate of cookies from the table. “I’m just here for the snacks.”

“Okay,” Laura narrowed her eyes at her. “Since Carmilla is being singularly unhelpful right now-” The girl in question just grinned at her. “Everyone, this is Carmilla Karnstein and she’s-”

“A time traveller,” Lafontaine ended her sentence for her, frowning when everyone stared at them in bewilderment. “What? Like we didn’t know that since she appeared there on the balcony five seconds ago?”

Complete and utter silence followed that particular declaration, only broken by the crunching sound of Carmilla decimating Laura’s cookie stash.

“Well, that was probably the most awkward coming out I’ve ever had, cupcake. And I almost got killed for my initial one,” Carmilla announced. “So, cheers?”

* * *

Following the stunned silence, acute and utter pandemonium ensues as everyone seems to collectively jump up, fall over and shout out whatever comes first to mind in some kind of manic version of tag.

Laura feels like the host of a particularly violent quiz show that no one bothers to listen to as Kirsch shouts at Mel to shoot Carmilla, shoot her _now_ and the archer in turn attempts just that but is fought off by a heroic Betty who has pulled out her fencing sword from god knows where, battle cry on her lips as she charges at Mel. Meanwhile, Lafontaine can barely control their excitement and almost trips over their papers, glasses slipping off their face as they ask Carmilla about blood samples, the mechanics of travelling, time paradoxes and moral obligation all in the same breath while the object of their interest just calmly suggests a live vivisection should they ever get too close to her with a needle while devouring yet another cookie - Perry who is still trying to clean up the spilled tea, almost faints at that.

All in all, it’s a complete disaster in less than ten seconds and when screaming herself hoarse apparently doesn’t do the trick, Laura takes the potted plant from the window sill, steps on the couch table and with a nod to Carmilla who just rolls her eyes and smirks, watches it burst into flames.

It catches everyone’s attention for about three seconds.

(Laura doesn’t need more as she calmly pulls down the collar of her shirt and shows them all the mark spreading across her chest).

* * *

“Dude…”

“I know.”

“But… _dude_ …”

“He’s been repeating the same sentence for fifteen minutes now. Do you think maybe someone should kick him?” Laf asked, a look of morbid curiosity on their face as they examined a shaken looking Kirsch who was still staring at the same spot Laura had occupied for her impromptu announcement.

“No one is kicking anyone here,” Perry said firmly, placing a tray with tea mugs on the now vacated couch table.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Carmilla drawled from where she was still lazing on the couch, one arm wrapped around Laura who’d buried her face into her time travelling _something_ ’s shoulder because her friends were crazy, _crazy_ people.

Crazy people that carried around bows and swords and had screaming matches in the middle of the living room because apparently, that was a productive thing to do when their friend had taken it up with a thousands-of-years old supernatural being and was marked as the by-product of time travel.

“If the evil mum is anything like the walking and talking calendar over there, I say we just stake her.”

“She’s not a vampire, you bow-wielding amazon” Betty protested, sword raised threateningly. “That’s like trying to kill a dragon with a spray can of insecticide.”

“Or a spatula,” Carmilla commented drily, earning herself an elbow in the side.

Mel rolled her eyes. “If we use something other than that toothpick you got there, Blondie, and get someone with actual talent to use it-“

“I’m a _nationally ranked_ fencer”, Betty deadpanned, “Contrary to you, I didn’t escape some medieval market in a quest for fame and glory and think that shooting everything on sight is a viable battle strategy.”

“Oh, so you think the megalomaniacal time paradox will leave Laura alone if we just ask real nice? Are you actually that delusional or did the mad scientist infect you with brain parasites again?”

“Hey, that was one time!” Laf interrupted, indignation written plainly across their face. “I just needed a temporary host for them, okay?”

Laura and Carmilla just stared at Lafontaine while Kirsch kept on muttering “Dude…” under his breath like a mantra.

“Remind me to never let them get close to me with a syringe,” Carmilla muttered into Laura’s hair with a look of barely polite distaste as she skimmed through a book on medieval torture methods. “Did you know your friends ranked that high on the MMPI?”

“I had my suspicions when Betty started seeing Sumerian runes all over the library,” Laura nodded, frowning at a particularly gruesome picture of a pair of thumbscrews. “Lafontaine’s laboratory is like all of Hogwarts crammed into a broom closet, Perry is… Perry and Mel keeps insisting on a yearly hunt that involves chasing Kirsch through the nearby woods dressed like a stag, so…”

“Well, cheer up sunshine,” Carmilla smiled in an attempt to be ‘uplifting’, “if it all goes to hell, at least we won’t have to witness that particular car crash of a wedding.” She pointed at Betty and Mel who were still facing off with their chosen weapons in hand.

“Frosh,” Lafontaine said, rubbing their brow with the expression of the long suffering, “last winter you were convinced that the merpeople at Lake Ontario were planning an uprising against waste disposal companies-”

Laura gasped. “They kept polluting the water! I was just raising awareness-”

“- by creating a news-podcast complete with weather forecast in _Merish_?”

“The language is severely underrepresented in modern media and as such-”

“Yes,” Lafontaine nodded slowly, “because merpeople have such great reception two-hundred and eighty feet underwater and are in dire need to know how cloudy a cloudy day in Canada will be. You know, in case they need to bring a jacket.”

“It was the principle of the thing!”

“To prove what exactly?” Carmilla asked, lips twitching. “That you’re just as mental as the rest of them? Congratulations, I knew that since you groped me in that coffee shop and proceeded to call my boobs ‘ _squishy’_. Nice first date etiquette by the way.”

 “Oh no, Hollis,” Laf howled with laughter, not caring when Laura started throwing pillows at them, “you didn’t-”

“I was _sleep-deprived_ ,” Laura hissed with bright red cheeks while the background noise of Betty and Mel fighting over proper use of sage in common summoning rituals increased in volume. “And space/time conundrum here was stalking me.”

“You sure you’re not a vampire?” Laf asked, facing Carmilla who just lifted a brow, completely engrossed in illustrated examples of how to effectively break all ten fingers of a victim in just under five seconds.

“Do you want to test it out?” she drawled. “I was always curious how long it takes for a regular human being to die from exsanguination.”

Laf leaned their head back. “She’s doing it again, Laura,” they said, keeping their research papers behind their back as if hiding them from Carmilla’s pyrokinetic abilities. “The death threats. It’s not very research conductive, okay?”

“Stop showing her you’re afraid then,” Laura muttered, forcing Carmilla to skip a few pages on genital torture until they landed on the relative safe topic of denailing. “It only encourages her.”

“So, you’ve figured me all out then?” Carmilla asked, a lilt to her voice.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Laura snuggled closer to her. “You’re still at least forty percent woman of mystery and thirty-three percent potential serial killer.”

“Flattering, I’m sure.”

“Very,” Laura smiled. “Might be even more so if you’d use your scary superpowers to keep my friends from tearing each other's heads off or, you know,” she shot a considering look at the fighting couple, “their clothes.”

“Gross,” Lafontaine nodded as Carmilla sat up and cracked her knuckles. “But accurate.”

“Do you think suspending them from the ceiling might do the trick?”

Laf tilted their head, considering the couple, ceiling height and room isolation. “Only if you gag them first.”

Carmilla sighed. “Well, that turned out kinkier than expected.”

“Please, don’t hurt my friends, Carm.”

“Told you I’m not the hero of this piece, cupcake,” Carmilla replied with a smirk as she loosened her shoulders. But before she could take a shot at the squabbling duo, they were pushed apart by a sudden dark red cloud appearing in the middle of the living room. A figure, dragging another behind them, stepped out of the smoke and when the air finally cleared, they could see that it was –

“ _Mattie_?”

The woman with the blood-red gloves and the subtly shimmering haute-couture dress smiled her shark like grin. “Hello, darling. Some bird told me that you were planning a rebellion and I thought I’d deliver a little present to you and the cub reporter.”

With these words, she pushed the other figure forward and Laura gasped when she recognized, a limping, bleeding –

“ _Will_?”

“Am I not the most wonderful sister _ever_?” Mattie grinned, clearly pleased with herself as everyone in the room just gaped at her. “What are you waiting for, children? Grab the salt and pour it around him before the cockroach escapes.”

* * *

In the end, it’s Perry who brings the salt and pours it around a still squirming Will in not just simple circle but a full-grown pentagram. There’s something different about her as she completes the task with her usual efficiency but no amount of fluttering and it’s not only Laura who notices.

Carmilla is frozen for about two minutes, watching her sister take control of a room full of idiotic, overgrown children as Mattie phrases it before she leaps up and they exchange greetings in rapidly fired French.

They match, the girl made from ink and paper and the woman forged in blood and fire. The colours of their marks are like the accents of their bodies and despite all the sudden disappearances, the pyrokinesis and the blood, it’s this moment when Laura realises that Carmilla isn’t human.

(And that Laura very much is.)

* * *

 “Plainly said, this parasitic lifeform here is the magical equivalent of a short fused teenage boy,” Mattie declared after everyone had settled back down again.

Even Mel and Betty had stopped fighting and were instead warily glancing back and forth between the intruder who was sipping wine on their couch and her hostage who was shouting himself hoarse in his nice little circle. Thankfully for the neighbourhood and their ear drums, Mattie had silenced him rather quickly with a snap of her fingers, so it was only a muted kind of shouting.

“His plans are generally rash, brutish and without fail-safes so once you find his weakness,” she pointed at the squirming minion of evil as Laura had dubbed him with the tip of her Louboutin’s, “he’s like a cockroach on its back. Generally disgusting and unhygienic but pathetically harmless.”

“So, you’re what now?” Mel asked, clearly unimpressed. “The supernatural form of a pest exterminator?”

“Careful, girlie. I could just as easily let him loose and unleash all his pent up… frustrations on you children while I watch along merrily. With your unfortunate taste in wine, I might even do the world a little favour.”

“Yeah,” Laura said, dragging the word out. “I think somewhere along the line you forgot to mention that your sister is a raging psychopath, Carm.”

“Are you really that surprised considering the rest of my family?” Carmilla shrugged. “Get her a better choice of vintage and she might even let you keep all your teeth.”

“That’s… reassuring.”

“Says the one with two Amazons and Frankenstein junior as friends.”

“You forgot the witch, little sister,” Mattie chimed in, a gleam in her eyes as she focused them on Perry who looked like she wanted nothing more than to disappear behind her cleaning rag.

“The witch?”

“What? Did the little ragdoll over there forgot to tell you she’s one of the most powerful witches in centuries?” Mattie acted surprised. “Freed a faerie queen just by wishing for it, almost turned the whole world into a dystopia and then saved it in just one evening. She never told you about that? Lovely times.”

“ _Perry_?” both Laura and Lafontaine exclaimed in surprise while the scared expression on Lola Perry’s face gave way to something fierce.

“That never happened,” she stated in her usual no-nonsense voice that was commonly used whenever Laf tried to turn their bathroom into an undersea world filled with really angry shrimp.

“Ah, yes. I forgot. You had some kind of Freudian coping strategy going on following those events. How unfortunate.”

“We agreed that we’d never talk about that again!” Perry’s curls were shaking and Laura saw Lafontaine reaching for the breathing bag and the salts.

“I never agreed to any such thing,” Mattie said delicately. “As proven by the fact that I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to track you down. Good choice in friends, though, it certainly made it easier to trust in chance.”

“So, she’s a bloodhound, too,” Mel muttered under her breath, causing Betty to snort and add, “And not a very good one at that.”

“Did I stutter when I mentioned she is one of the most powerful witches out there?” Mattie asked curiously, the calmness a façade for something far more sinister and Carmilla pulled Laura closer towards her. “She didn’t want to be found so there wasn’t much I could do aside from consulting Maman. But Mommy dearest would have been so delighted about all that ripe power, she’d have crushed her like all her other toys. Concern for collateral damages has never been her style, unfortunately.”

Perry grew white at that and Laf sported a greenish tinge around their nose. Carmilla’s explanations about her mother had been brief but to the point disturbing and no one wanted to imagine either Laura or Perry in her clutches.

“So, Killer-Lady does have feelings,” Kirsch grinned, apparently the only one to see the good side of the story. Wherever in Hogwarts that was. “Cool.”

“I think it might be much less painful if I killed the puppy now,” Carmilla muttered. “For him and the rest of us.”

“No one kills anyone here,” Perry interjected with a shrill voice and stood up. “This isn’t a joke, okay? That monster won’t stop at anything and she’ll take Laura here to force Carmilla into compliance and once she knows about her, she’ll come after me and this wasn’t… this wasn’t supposed to happen, okay? Because I bought strawberries and chocolate and I was supposed to bake a cake for the Spring Fair and-”

“I like strawberry cake!”

“- and I don’t want evil weird conspiracies happening in my friends’ living room and hostages dragging dirt and salt over the floor and – How did you even get to him?” Perry turned to Mattie who’d watched her explosion like someone enjoying a New Year’s Eve firework with champagne in their hand. “If you couldn’t even find _me_ , how did you get to him?”

“Ah,” Mattie smiled. “As you know, performing any kind of magic creates a direct link between the caster and the object of the spell, allowing the energy to flow in that direction. An accomplished student knows how to sever that link as part of the original spell, but William here was a bit careless since he thought the little moppet’s death would take care of it and forgot to include that precaution.”

“So, when you took the necklace from me…,” Laura interjected.

Mattie grinned. “It allowed me direct access to this… lapse of good taste. Honestly, children, never try and gain immortality by drinking other people’s blood, it smells quite horribly.”

Laura wasn’t sure but it looked like Lafontaine was even taking notes.

“Yes, and as wonderful as having the little cockroach under our heels is, Mattie,” Carmilla cut in. “How exactly does our new exotic pet help us?”

“What? The chance for revenge not enough for you, little monster? He tried to kill your little girlfriend after all.” At Carmilla’s glare, Mattie just chuckled. “Fine,” she said. “The weasel is an opportunist at heart and he has no real loyalty to anyone but himself. That might make him a useful tool for Maman but it also means that he’s assembled quite the research on how to get rid of her should the need arise.”

“So, he knows how to kill her?” Laura asked excitedly.

“Knowing might be phrased optimistically, but does he have an idea?” Mattie’s smile was bright and sharp. “Yes, he does.”

She pointed at Will who was still sulking in his circle, having giving up the screaming in favour of simply glaring at everyone involved, but there was a flicker of fear in his eyes as he returned Mattie’s gaze. “Come on, little boy,” she taunted, lifting the silencing but he just spit at her.

“As if I would tell you anything, you traitorous piece of-”

He didn’t get very far because suddenly there were flames towering high above him, cutting off whatever insult he’d been ready to hurl at her. Everyone turned to Mattie in fear and astonishment, but she just smiled at Perry.

“Thank you, darling. That wasn’t necessary.”

“He wasn’t very polite,” Perry said, frowning but clearly satisfied with herself as the rest of the group just gaped at her. “And it’s still my circle.”

When the flames died down, the floor was still immaculate except for the salt and Will was cowering in one corner of the circle, whimpering.

“Okay, ratface,” Carmilla took over the interrogation. “Clearly Mattie and Curly Sue own your ass here and since neither I or any other person in this room has any vested interest in your continued existence, why don’t you just make it less painful for yourself and spill the beans?”

“Fuck you,” Will hissed but one raised brow from Perry had him cowering again. “There’s a sword,” he finally bit out, the words clearly paining him. “There’s a sword rumoured to be able to kill travellers and with the right amplification-”

“What sword?” Lafontaine asked, holding up their phone so that J.P. could listen in and help them search.

Will’s lips contorted into what was supposed to be a smile but looked like it was falling apart at the seams. “Don’t you remember it, Kitty Kat? You’ve seen it once, been so close to dying from it once…”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Betty interrupted, but Laura, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, knew the answer before he even uttered the words.

“The Vordenberg sword,” he hissed, a malicious smile on his face as Carmilla recoiled at the mere words.

“Do you know where it is?” Mattie asked, pushing Carmilla aside. J.P. meanwhile had pulled up a couple of pictures on Lafontaine’s phone and Laura recognized it just by looking at it.

“… rumoured to have been given to the Vordenberg ancestors by the archangel Raphael himself to purify the earth from the unnatural ones… shatters all that opposes it… disappeared with the death of the main line…” Lafontaine recited with occasional beeps, curtesy of J.P.

“Well, congratulations,” Carmilla bit out sarcastically, flopping back onto the sofa. “It’s disappeared and we have no idea where to even go looking for that stupid thing. So, we’re still utterly screwed.”

“Maybe…,” Laura started. “But maybe not.”

“Laura?”

“Do you remember when I told you that maybe this is like one of those chicken and egg things?” She pointed at the black purple pants and the cape-like cardigan Carmilla was wearing. “Because I think it is.”

“What are you yammering on about, girl?” Mattie demanded to know but Carmilla had gone quiet.

“That we know where the sword is.” Laura raised her chin, one hand reaching out to touch Carmilla’s knee. “Because I’ve already seen Carm retrieve it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I split the last chapter in two to allow for more space and conclusion and stuff - if anyone was wondering :)


	7. Paper Planes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are swords and rituals, Laura and Carmilla define their relationship and Perry is pretty badass. Also, they discuss advanced morality and not in the fun way.

**Soundtrack: Wonderwall - Ryan Adams**

* * *

 Retrieving the sword turns out to be the easiest part.

Carmilla does it with a blank face and poison on her tongue, something like ice cursing in her veins that takes a while to melt after she unceremoniously drops the sword in front of Lafontaine, assuring everyone and Kirsch that it was quick, easy and no one idiotic enough to bother her as she basically robbed the Vordenberg vault of a prestigious bank.

She flinches when Laura touches her, though.

So, she distracts her with cookies and research on how to combine summoning rituals with the runes on Laura’s arm until Carmilla’s shoulders relax and her breath goes easier. Betty and Mel try to one up each other with their findings, Lafontaine conducts cryptic discussions with J.P. and Kirsch explains in great detail all the different kinds of take-away he’s procured for their dinner as they all pretend not to listen to Perry’s and Mattie’s quietly hissed discussion in the kitchen.

(Carmilla still looks surprised when Laura drags her into her bedroom at four a.m. for another night of restless sleep and it makes something inside her ache.)

* * *

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this again,” Carmilla grumbled on Monday evening, arms crossed in front of her chest. “But this is really the fucking stupidest idea anyone’s ever come up with in the whole history of _really fucking stupid ideas_. I should know, I live in it.”

“Gee, Laura, tell your time warp of a girlfriend to quit with the motivational speeches,” Lafontaine huffed. “I’m feeling awfully inspired by it.”

“She’s not my-” Laura started but quickly cut herself off when everyone turned to look at her, including Carmilla who raised her brow in silent challenge. “Okay, she kind of is,” Laura conceded a bit flustered, the tips of her ears burning.

“I hope so,” Mel grumbled, righting her bow and the cache of arrows on her back. “Because if you reach Romeo and Juliet levels of drama in your relationship, you better make it official.”

“Says the Benedict of that particular romance,” Lafontaine quipped, nose buried in their research papers and J.P. beeped in agreement. “Or is it just much ado about nothing with you and the germ phobic fencer over there?”

“Oh, that’s Shakespeare, right?” Kirsch chimed in, beaming at everyone in their odd little group that looked like someone had thrown Robin Hood together with Star Trek and just a touch of paramilitary punk rock, the odd cherry on top being Laura’s snowflake covered beanie.

“So, we’re going steady now or what?” Carmilla teased Laura, one arm thrown around her shoulders as Perry distractedly patted Kirsch’s head, telling him that yes it was Shakespeare and could he please get her the desiccated spiders now? Mattie just kept on observing it all with an amused expression, dragging a bound and gagged Will behind her with teasing remarks about him being “a good boy, such a good boy”.

“Sometimes it’s not that hard to believe that you’re centuries old,” Laura said with a grumble. “You even talk like my Dad.”

“If you start calling her Daddy in front of me, I’m going to stab you,” Betty threatened from where she was walking behind them, looking completely unamused as she raised her fencing sword.

Laura almost choked on mere air at that and Carmilla looked as if she wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or murder someone.

Preferably Betty.

“So, quick recap,” Lafontaine announced when they’d reached the top of the stands at the empty ice-hockey stadium where Kirsch’s team regularly practised. They were all bundled up in practical but non-restrictive winter clothing, numerous weapons and other gear strapped to their backs and arms. Perry had them carry crates of herbs and candles which she kept on fretting about whenever Kirsch tilted his too far to one side until Mattie threatened to shut her up in such vivid detail that they were all feeling a little green around the nose.

“In order to summon and banish the evil mum timelord, we have to perform two different rituals in fairly quick succession. The first one is an enhanced summoning ritual specifically designed for Mommy Dearest. We will use the Zombie here as supernatural bait since his continued existence kinda depends on her blood and over the years he’s probably ingested a fair amount of it so it should work.”

“Is it going to kill him?” Kirsch asked, eyeing the Fear the Walking Dead advertisement curiously.

“Hopefully.”

“ _Possibly_ ,” Laf conceded, flipping through their notes once again. “The second ritual is meant to contain her so that Laura and Carmilla can stab her. Since these rituals are contrary in nature we cannot perform them simultaneously. Hence, the ice rink.”

Everyone looked down at the empty rink and then back up again to Lafontaine who was grinning proudly, still delighted by their two thirty a.m. revelation that had finalized their plans.

“Perry will draw the pentagram and runes needed for the second ritual on the ice and we will then proceed to carve the lines into it. We need to be careful and work cleanly so that each letter is neat and deep enough. Understood?”

They all nodded and Laura reached for Carmilla’s hand. It was small and dry and felt like paper.

“Then Perry will draw the runes and circles for the first ritual, the summoning, just with the herb and ash mix over the carved lines. We proceed to summon the Demon queen and the moment she appears we need to move fast. If I say “Go” you quickly move from your positions in the circle to pour as much from the salty stuff,” they raised a zipper bag with a salt and herb and various animal parts mix in the air, “into the ridges of the second ritual runes. Don’t worry about the first lines, we won’t need them at that point anymore. If that’s done, you move back into your previous position as Perry completes the ritual to trap the Evil Stepmom and Carmilla and Laura stab her. _Puff_. No timelord and hopefully no regeneration into a younger and more stylish version. Everyone got that?”

There was nodding again and Mel and Betty even raised their respective weapons in agreement.

“Okay, so then positons are as follows. Kirsch, Betty, Mel as well as the terrifying sister,” Mattie bared her teeth at that, “and myself stand at the tips of the five-pointed star right on the circle line. Laura and Carmilla with the sword take up position in the star but not the middle as we’ll throw Zombie boy in there and Perry performs the spells in the space between the two circles.”

A beat and then Carmilla let out a huff. “Just for the record,” she drawled. “I think this is still a really fucking stupid idea and we’re all going to be messily dead but-”

“It’s the best one we got?”

“Exactly.”

* * *

It takes them almost two hours to draw and then carve the pentagram into the ice of the rink. Perry keeps correcting and correcting them, her nervousness fuelling their own but for once nobody says anything. Carmilla finally cleans up the lines by setting her fingertips on fire and alternately tracing the carvings and threatening Lafontaine with bodily harm whenever they get too enthusiastic about her pyrokinetic abilities.

When it’s all said and done, it’s quiet. Each echoing sound underlines how small they are in comparison and when they move into position, Laura squeezes Carmilla’s hand one last time before moving to the opposite site of the five-pointed star, sword held tightly in both hands.

(When Perry’s voice grows louder, disembodied, Laura grips the sword tighter and starts counting down.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two -)

* * *

“ _Go_!” Lafontaine screamed when grey mist started rising from the lines of the pentagram and they all scrambled to pour the salt mix into the carved runes, hands and knees cold, wet and bruised as chaos erupted around them, a full-on thunderstorm set free in a confined space. Laura could hear Carmilla yell at the others to work faster, _faster you idiots_ and Kirsch was humming some football stadium song as the wind picked up and with it Perry’s voice, piercing through all the chaos, something old and terrible caught within.

The curly haired girl was just a blur in the steadily darker growing storm and Laura swore she saw crows when Lafontaine scrambled to their feet. “Get ready!” they yelled at them and the five people at the star’s tips slid back into position, candles raised high above their head.

Laura gripped the sword tighter.

Perry’s chanting turned into a yell and like an implosion the raging thunderstorm suddenly got sucked back into the center of the pentagram. The raised candles lit up and the fog disappeared, leaving behind a smiling woman in their midsts with Zombie-Will’s remains plastered across the inner space of the pentagram in boiling, green-tinged splashes.

“Mircalla, my darling glittering girl,” the woman cooed, honeyed nails over chalk board and Laura saw Carmilla flinch even across the distance. The oldest time traveller was tall in stature and dressed in expensive black designer wear, her dark hair perfectly coiffed. “If you wanted to have a little chat, you could have just called. I do have a phone after all.”

“Yeah, we thought we’d do this the traditional way. You know, because the parental generation always complains about modern means of communication,” Carmilla bit out with a forced air of casualness. “Also, I swore that the only way I’d ever talk to you again was through bulletproof glass with your face like one of those masks from Silence of the Lambs, so…”

“Oh, quit with the theatrics, darling,” Carmilla’s mother brushed her off, picking lint of her black power suit as she examined the blood on her high heels with distaste. “What have I ever done to deserve being talked to like-“

“Do you really want to open up that line of conversation? Are centuries of pointless torture not enough to-”

“Pointless? I wouldn’t quite call it that, my lovely girl. Just look at you, you’re fiercer than ever.” From where Laura stood she could only see the woman’s back as she gestured towards Carmilla whose face was carved from stone. “Silly notions of romance seem to suit you after all.”

Something twitched around Carmilla’s mouth and she shot Laura a look before turning back to her mother. “You know what?” she said, sounding bored. “You annoy me. Let’s just get this over with.”

“Get over with what?” her mother asked, sounding curious. “That ghastly haircut? Really, darling, you should let Marcel have a look at that.”

“Oh, did I forget to mention?” A slow smirk spread on Carmilla’s face, the one that made her look like one of the Fair Folk, all teeth and edges and blueish skin. “We’re going to kill you, Mummy dearest.”

“Kill _me_?” the woman laughed outright as if it was the most delicious joke she’d heard in centuries. “But why would you want to do such a thing? Sure, a couple years ago you were almost worthless to me to the point that even that bloodsucking parasite was of more use, but now… Why would you want to kill me now that you’re my most prized possession? And you even get to keep your little pre-schooler, too.”

“Yes, well, maybe the pre-schooler doesn’t appreciate being potentially held hostage to force Carmilla to do your bidding so thanks but no thanks,” Laura interjected, sword raised with more bravery than she felt. Slowly, Carmilla’s mother turned around, a lazy smile forming on her lips as she took in all five foot four of tiny Laura Hollis in her winter sweater and snowflake beanie.

“Tsk, tsk,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t they get younger with every year. Is she even legal, Mircalla?”

“Do you really want to have a discussion on advanced morality right now?” Laura said tersely, raising the sword even higher but the woman didn’t even seem particularly bothered by its presence.

“Maybe it is a conversation we should indeed have,” Carmilla’s mother drawled advancing on Laura who forced herself not to move. “Because see, all that theoretic drivel about tiers of morality and the greater good in your little fantasy books and pretentious philosophy classes may have told you that killing me is the best option, but now that you’re standing here, sword pointed at me,” she took another step closer, the tip of the sword almost grazing her stomach, “you just can’t bring yourself to take that step.”

“Laura, do it!”, Carmilla snapped, just as Mell and Betty started yelling “Stab her, stab her!” but Laura was transfixed. The oldest time traveller’s dark iris seemed to expand as she looked at Laura, the black overtaking her eyes until they were just dark, endless pits.

She smiled, a row of blinding white teeth. “See? You’re just too good for this world, Laura Hollis. To good and too pure for the base act of killing the oldest entity on this planet.”

“Finish it, you idiot girl!”, Mattie’s voice pierced the fog around Laura’s mind for a second, together with Carmilla’s pleads of “ _Laura, don’t listen to her, Laura…_ ” but Mother just raised her hand, cutting off all noise in the process, even Perry’s continued chants.

“Do you know how much I’ve seen? How many cities I’ve seen built and destroyed? Places that are forgotten, countries that will be forgotten, people rising and dying in this endless circle… I am as old as time itself. I was there when it was born, I was its first thought, its first heartbeat. Do you know how much the world will lose by killing me?”

Laura was trembling, the sword suddenly weighing twice as much as before and her muscles ached with holding it.

“Compared to me, Mircalla is just a child,” the woman continued softly, her voice almost caressing. “So powerful and yet just an infant. Can you imagine what I can do? What wishes I can grant you?”

Unbidden, a flash of the car accident so many years ago passed through Laura’s mind and she felt temptation tickle at the tips of her fingers, felt that longing in the back of her throat for a scent, a feeling she hadn’t experienced in so long and it burned out the air in her lungs.

“Just take my hand,” Carmilla’s mother whispered, standing so close to the line separating them that Laura swore she felt her breath on her, a tang of sweetly-heavy perfume hanging in the air. “Drop that silly sword and join me and the world shall turn only for us.”

Laura blinked, her blurry vision moving to something behind Mother as the connection to those pitch-black orbs was severed for a second and then Carmilla’s face went back into focus, her face torn and desperate as she screamed and screamed and _screamed_ –

“Carm…,” Laura whispered as if only just remembering, her thoughts clearing for the moment and it felt like breaking through the surface of the Don River once again. The woman in the circle sighed.

“Of course, she comes with us,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Silly nickname or not, the whole point is-”

She cut herself off when she noticed Laura raising the sword once again, fierce determination replacing the confusion and temptation from seconds ago and the woman’s whole demeanour grew cold.

“Oh, I see how it is,” she said silkily and the tone sent shivers down Laura’s spine. “You’re just as foolhardy as the rest of them. Let’s see how stupidly brave you are when I feed you to the monsters lurking underground. How prettily you can cry. That other girl… she was a pretty crier, a pretty beggar, too, if I remember correctly. If you’re only half as good, I will let Mircalla watch even, isn’t that-”

She didn’t get much further than that because suddenly, a small figure had jumped on her back, forcing her to stagger back from the force.

“You won’t hurt her,” Carmilla hissed dangerously, pressing Will’s knife to her mother’s throat as pain and fury contorted her face. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

Laura saw the moment the power balance tipped, the force of surprise only lasting for so long and Carmilla had broken the circle trying to get to Laura and her mother, effectively freeing her. She saw the others, thrown back by the force of the shattered circle, Perry unmoving as Mattie and Laf tried to get to her and she saw the moment the oldest time traveller reached for Carmilla, remembered her pain and she couldn’t let her do that again, couldn’t force her to –

The moment Laura snapped and pushed the sword forward, feeling it pierce through fabric and what once was flesh, once was bone – a black tinted mass that poured from the woman’s body - in that second, that glimpse of stillness, Laura saw Carmilla’s face, hope and despair all warring in _blue-black-white_ before the whole world burst into flames and chaos.

“You fools!” she heard Carmilla’s mother yell over the sound of the detonation erupting from where the sword was still buried in her body. “You don’t know what you’ve done, you-”

“Laura!” Carmilla’s voice was a faint shout at the periphery of her mind as Laura stared at the sword in disbelief.

_We are time itself_ , Carmilla’s voice echoed in her head. _We do not die_.

So, what happened when you did in fact kill the oldest traveller there was – if you killed time _itself_? If you released all that power contained in one body and set it free –

What happened with that?

Black blood kept pouring out of what once was Carmilla’s mother, darker than any night Laura had ever seen, like a hole in the fabric of reality and then the second wave of the explosion caught her. It threw her back further than the first one, further than the circle and the stadium, further than –

“Laura, _no_!”  

It threw her out of space until there wasn’t any more space to exist in. It threw her back in time – but what was time even? Music, yes, colour splashes to the beat of Seven Nation Army, dividing all that was Laura Hollis into pieces and particles, fractured bones and memories of playgrounds and sticky fingers, her father’s smiling face and the smell of gasoline.

“ _Laura…_ “

She was dust scattered in the wind, the lives of millions passing her by in glimpses, bright flashes of others’ loves and touches and salt-stained lips until the light around her dimmed, not enough consciousness left to even think of a letter let alone pronounce oneself. The force of the blow sent her back even further, a moment of zero gravity in out of space and time and for a moment Laura Hollis ceased to exist.

_One –_

* * *

_\- two, three, four -_

The darkness is a living thing, it breathes and moves and boils and she is nothing anymore. She has no name, no home, no purpose and if she still knew what fear is, here at the beginning and end of everything, she’d be afraid of drowning but as it is, for a millennium or a finger snap, she just floats.

Until –

The first glimpse of light is a pair of brown eyes in a child’s face, open and curious as they laugh and this jolt of happiness is the first thing scattering through what remains of her after an eternity.

(Laura latches onto that feeling, grasps like a woman drowning for that face and those eyes so that she can relearn how to breathe because it’s her, it’s her, it’s _her_.

Carmilla.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise a happy ending, okay? This ship is all about happy endings so, you know, just throwing that out there. Also, i just saw wonder woman and god fucking damnit...


	8. Love Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which stylistic devices and metaphors are analyzed, Laura keeps swimming and Carmilla gets a few tattoos. Also, there are chicken and eggs and no one knows which one came first - aside from maybe Betty.

**Soundtrack: Nobody Not Even The Rain - La Dispute**

* * *

 

_Five, six, seven…_

The child’s growth dragged Laura inch by inch out of the darkness that had enveloped her.

She was no more than one or two conscious thoughts at any given moment, a mere reflection of every feeling that passed through this tiny Carmilla – no Mircalla, they called her Mircalla here. There was fear, joy and anger and Laura lived through them all for the first time, high notes in this soft melody of early life.

The next moment she was aware of, the little girl was running and Laura with her and she felt the jolt, that shift in the air in the split second they were airborne only to land in something so bright and colourful they were blinded by it, the wide array of scents possibly overwhelming.

From then on, existence was marked by either dark shadows and the taste of artificial numbness or bright splashes of colour and smiles, the framework for the words they kept learning. Laura knew what adventure ( _Abenteuer_ ) tasted like – salty-sweet and fresh, how nightmares ( _Albträume_ ) made you feel - clammy and shaky with weak knees and burning lungs, and what time ( _Zeit, die Zeit, Zeit, Zeit…_ ) was supposed to be.

It wasn’t.

Because time was their friend ( _Freund, mein Freund_ ), a warm blanket to curl up in whenever the castle got too drafty and Laura held onto every one of these words, those anchors keeping her tied to Carmilla for fear of drifting. And for a long while, there was no separation between the two. Laura was Carmilla’s heart, the deepest thought she’d ever have. They were so intimately interwoven that no one could tell where one ended and the other began.

_… thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…_

They kissed the first girl when they were sixteen in Paris, 1921, according to the banners at the New Year Party they attended, with champagne on their lips and sequins under their fingers ( _ein Kuss, nur ein Kuss, Liebling_ ). They learned what sex was in Berlin, 1972, that sweat-slicked slide of bodies and mouths that left them addicted and it wasn’t until they were burning, Austria, 1698, that Laura grasped her first autonomous thought in years, a long drawn out “ _No_ …” and the separation was instant.

One moment Laura could feel their skin burning, the next she was reeling back, the fire a distant blot of light as the mob cried out in rage, chants in the air and the woman, _the_ _woman_ was there, dark and tall and cruel. Laura fought her way back, the steady maelstrom of time’s river threatening to take her away, back to the darkness and its infinity. But Laura fought. She bit and screamed and cried until she could see Carmilla’s face again but she was too late.

The fire was still burning but the crowd silent, dispersed or warring with death on the ground as a bloody figure rose from the bodies and Laura felt like crying, the odd feeling of another person’s grief overtaking her until it was all she was, the silent lament in the wind and the crackling fire as Carmilla took Mother’s hand and smiled.

Ever since then, Laura was Carmilla’s shadow.  

_… twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three…_

She was the black veil the girl wore, the circles under her eyes in neon light, the accusing glare in washroom mirrors as she changed from dress to leather to corsets and back again. She was the drag of ink across innocents’ skin and the bitter taste of memory. The girl changed her name as often as she changed her clothes, her friends, her loves. She called herself Millarca, Millie, Calla, Arcillma but never Carmilla and Laura felt herself drifting, beating blood through someone that had forgotten how to feel.

When she lit up once again, it was a candle flame.

_… one-hundred ninety, one-hundred ninety-one, one-hundred ninety-two…_

It was just a bright spot in the darkness, a lovely smile in a lovely face full of innocent delight and Carmilla was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Laura couldn’t remember being in love before and as she watched the two girls dance, she realized that the green tinge of jealousy had previously been foreign to her as well. It was a curious feeling, this sound of their hearts beating out of tune, the pinnacle of a separation over a hundred and fifty years in the making and she didn’t know how to touch Carmilla without fingers.

But when the pyre burned again, Laura was there with her.

_… two-hundred and thirty-five, two-hundred and thirty-six, two-hundred and thirty-seven…_

Sealed into that circle, with the burning girl’s cries in her ears, time which had been protection and warmth and home ( _ein Zuhause, mein Schatz, unser Zuhause_ ) became a coffin filled with blood. Laura tried holding Carmilla as she tore at the invisible lines, clawed at the ground and screamed herself bloody, tried blending out the noise, the cries and the pleas, by pressing her hands to her ears but though she was more than a thought by now, she was still less than a ghost.

“ _The traveller’s heart was once stolen by the night_ ,” she kept on whispering to distract her love from the smell of burning flesh, tears dripping down her cheeks as the screams died down to whimpers and prayers, “ _and quietly, stealthily gifted to sunlight…_ “

Laura tried telling her stories as well and when the noise rose in volume, she started singing, off-key and stilted but she tried to be louder than the fire, louder than the screams.  Poetry they’d thrived on was sung as lullabies to ease the shaking bones and muscles and she whispered Carmilla’s name brokenly as if reminding her of who she was, pleading her to remember time and gardens and books ( _ein Garten voller Bücher, mein Herz_ ), just as Carmilla lost herself.

_… two-hundred and sixty-three, two-hundred and sixty-four, two-hundred and sixty-five…_

When the circle broke, the force of it threw her once again. A leave in the wind, feather weight, Laura could do nothing as she was torn from Carmilla. Because of what use was a heart when you’d forgotten to care? When there were no words left to tie them together?  

_The traveller’s heart was once stolen by the night…_

But this time it threw her forward instead of back and she floundered, a mess of thoughts and the shadow of a body, unable to do anything as she desperately tried to reach for fireflies and candles and then suddenly she was, hands grabbing, holding and –

_The traveller’s heart was once stolen…_

Stopping felt like crashing.

_… by the night._

Blinding light and the air pressed out of her lungs and suddenly she was –

_… gifted to sunlight._

* * *

Laura is six years old and a Beatles song plays on the radio as they’re driving home from Grandma’s place.

She hears her mother chide her laughingly as she presses her chubby knees into the driver’s seat in front of her, all the while telling her stories about the weather and what they’ll eat for dinner and when is Daddy coming home, Mum?

She doesn’t see the oncoming truck until the car’s insides are lit up with its headlights, the sound of screeching tires in the air as she’s thrown back once again –

(But this time someone catches her.)

* * *

_… three-hundred and nineteen, three-hundred and twenty, three hundred and twenty-one…_

“Laura?” Carmilla’s voice was full of disbelief giving way to a desperate, grasping hope as the headlights cast yellow rays into the dark-blue night. “Laura, what are you-”

“You have to save her!” Laura yelled as Carmilla held onto her barely corporeal form, fingers wrapped around her face and neck, hungrily taking her in. “Carm, you have to save her!”

“I remember you,” Carmilla whispered instead, there on that foggy street with broken glass under their feet as they heard little Laura Hollis cry in the upturned car. “You were always there, even in that circle – you were there and when you were _not_ after I got out, I thought I’d just imagined it… but you…”

“I’m real,” Laura promised. “Carm, I promise it was all real but you have to _save her_.”

“But you... I can’t let you-”

“I will be fine,” Laura tried to smile, feeling the currents tearing at her once again. “Carm, you did this once already. You saved me. Now please do it for her.”

Carmilla just stared at where her fingers kept Laura anchored to this moment. “You gave me my name, Laura,” she whispered. “My _name_.”

“I-“

“It was the only sane thought I had left when I crawled out of that circle alone. An endless repetition of that name and so… I chose it.”

“I left you alone,” Laura croaked, tears blurring her vision as it dawned on her. “For fifty years, I left you alone and when you found me again, I had no idea who you even _were_ …”

“You called my boobs squishy,” Carmilla tried to joke despite sounding as choked up as Laura did. “But the actual first time I saw you again, you called me a stupid vampire and then stripped me off all my clothes.”

“Sounds like I’m the only one doing the manhandling in this relationship,” Laura whispered, fighting a teary smile.

“It took me a while until I recognized you,” Carmilla said softly, thumb rubbing over Laura’s cheek. “Because I’d never actually seen you as anything approaching corporeal but then you touched me and I _knew_ -”

“I promise I’ll come back,” Laura whispered, not knowing what else to say as she cupped Carmilla’s face, relishing in the contact for the first time in what felt like decades. “And I’ll promise that I’ll know you. But you have to _save her_ so I can do that.”

Realization flit across Carmilla’s face and then her jaw set and she nodded, reigning her emotions back in. “Okay,” she said hoarsely. “ _Okay_. But if you’re not there, cupcake,” she threatened. “If you’re not there when I get back, I’ll tear the whole universe apart looking for you.”

Laura smiled as she pried apart Carmilla’s hands keeping her there on this foggy street. “See you on the other side, Carm.”

* * *

This time, as the river’s currents try taking her away again, she fights.

It’s like moving upstream and she’s choking on the water, paralyzed by the cold, the waves getting higher and higher as Laura fights against time’s flow to get back to where she belongs to.

She thinks of her Dad and his smile, the warmth of his embrace. She thinks of Betty and Mel, Kirsch, Perry and Lafontaine. She thinks of Carmilla and centuries of companionship and that it all must mean _something_ in the end as she slowly regains physicality.

The river abruptly ends at a cliff, the water falling up instead of down and Laura’s exhausted and bone-deep tired and she laughs and laughs and _laughs_.

(She feels the wind in her hair and she spreads her arms wide, letting herself fall.

Because she is the traveller’s heart.)

* * *

_… three-hundred and thirty-five, three-hundred and thirty-six, three-hundred and thirty-seven…_

Laura skidded across the ice-rink headfirst, sound, feeling and colour all rushing back to her in an instant. For a moment, she just laid there as sensation slowly crawled up her nerves again. The burn of her scrape across the ice lit up in her hands, cheek and knees and when she tried sitting up, she felt dizzy.

“Laura!” It was a cacophony of voices that descended upon her, different variations of her name, a desperate “Hollis!” and Kirsch’s muffled “Little Nerd Hottie!” thrown somewhere in there, but it was only her voice that Laura heard clearly.

“Cupcake, hey…” Someone cautiously touched her shoulder, the pressure almost overwhelming for a second but then Laura took a deep breath and everything hazy went back into focus when she saw Carmilla’s face.

“Carm…,” she croaked as she was slowly turned on her back as Kirsch pushed a blanket underneath her body and Lafontaine moved to check her for damages. “Carm, I…”

“Shht, Laura,” Carmilla tried to shush her and it looked like she’d been crying. “It’s fine. We’re all alive.”

“A bit shaken up, yes,” Lafontaine interjected, nodding over to where Mattie with barely a hair out of place held up a shaky Perry who looked like she’d just won a fight with a tornado - if the state of her curls was any indication.

“A bit bruised,” Mel added from where she was bandaging the cuts in Betty’s palms, ignoring the blonde’s biting commentary on how to make the stitches more even.   

“But we’re alive,” Lafontaine concluded, smiling brightly if a bit crazed, the expression in their eyes just a tad bit manic. “We vaporized the evil mum timelord and now you’re back and Vampirella here can quit growling and jumping around in time like someone did a bad editing job on reality.”

“I was looking for her, you idiot,” Carmilla snarled but there was no real heat behind it as she tentatively smiled at Laura. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, cupcake.”

“I promised, didn’t I?” Laura whispered before she was shaken by a coughing fit. When she looked up again, Carmilla was staring at her in wonder and… fear?

“Laura, you’re… you’re _bleeding_.”

“Oh…” Laura sat up, touching the scrape on her forehead but when she looked at her fingers, they were not stained with the expected red.

They were golden.

“What the holy-” Hastily she looked at her other scrapes, the ones on her hands and elbows and even the cut in her jeans, expecting it to be just paint, just stupid, mundane old _paint_ but it was all –

Golden.

“Frosh…” Lafontaine carefully interjected, kneeling besides Carmilla to examine the scrapes. “What happened while you were gone?”

“I was just-” Panic started rising in Laura’s stomach, breath going faster. Because what was this? What happened to her while she was – “The explosion threw me back so far until I there was just darkness and then I found Carmilla and she somehow dragged me back and then I jumped around for a bit and before I more or less walked back here which you know, not recommended unless you’re Diana Prince levels of strong, so…,” she trailed off, laughing awkwardly against the panic in her veins.

“Has this happened before?” Lafontaine asked Carmilla who only shook her head, not taking her eyes off Laura.

“No, not that I ever heard of. We are born, not _made_ there is no way-“

“No way of what?” Laura interjected. “What happened to me?”

“Cupcake,” Carmilla said very softly, taking both her hands, the golden blood mixing with the blue one from the scrapes on Carmilla’s fingers. “I think you might be one of us now.”

“One of-”

“A time traveller,” Lafontaine nodded earnestly. “Frosh, you’re an actual, full-on Doctor Who _time traveller_!”

* * *

In the ensuing chaos, Carmilla cups her face and tells her to close her eyes.

Imagine the one place you want to be right now, she says. Just one place, picture it with all your senses. What it looks like, what it smells like, how it makes you feel…

As Carmilla’s voice trails off, Laura thinks of fireworks and champagne and then suddenly the river she’s been struggling against is taking her there.

(When Laura opens her eyes again, she’s in an ostentatious ballroom, sunlight filtering in through floor-length windows overlooking the Eiffel-tower and she gasps.)

* * *

“Paris? Really?” Carmilla asked suddenly from right beside her and Laura jumped. Well, she would have jumped if she’d been able to move at all which –

No.

“Holy fishsticks, how did you get here?” she exclaimed, struggling to sit up from the polished wooden floor. “For that matter, how did I even get here? Was this supposed to happen? Shouldn’t we have known if this was supposed to happen?”

“Time traveller,” Carmilla smirked, still looking battered and bruised but also indescribably… happy? “Told you, cutie. And I just closed my eyes and thought of you.”

“You’re a sap,” Laura said almost accusatorily but with a smile on her face despite how much it was still hurting.

“Says the one who whisked us both off to Paris.”

“Okay, A, I whisked myself here, you’re just stalking me again-”

“Really, stalking? That’s where you’re going with this?”

“And _B_ , I was just remembering that New Year Party we attended here in Paris in-”

“- 1921?” Carmilla finished for her with a smirk. “That was good year.”

“It really was.” Laura smiled, reaching out for Carmilla to cup her face in one hand, the golden colour on her fingers dragging across the other girl’s cheek.

It sank in.

“Hey, Carm…”

“Hmm?”

“Let me see your arm for a quick second,” Laura requested, taking Carmilla’s hand and pushing up the long-sleeved flannel shirt the other girl was wearing.

The outside was covered in golden letters.

“Oh…” Laura’s silent amazement was nothing to the curses grazing Carmilla’s tongue as she pulled her shirt off in a hasty motion, examining herself in the floor-length mirrors of the ballroom.

They both stared.

Where the inky-blue words travelled down the insides of Laura’s arms and up over her chest where the mark rested, the golden letters on Carmilla’s skin crawled up the outside of hers and across her upper back where _Laura’s mark_ glowed.

It was a golden wreath of holly.

“The holly girl,” Carmilla breathed out with a slight chuckle. “I should’ve known.”

“How could you have possibly known that?” Laura asked sceptically, her fingers itching to touch the golden tattoos. “I didn’t know about that and I’ve been a traveller for all of five minutes. Or you know, three hundred and thirty-seven years if you count it like that.”

“Well, it seems slightly more plausible than having the scores for the Harry Potter theme written on my left forearm.”

“Or Firefly dialogue,” Laura said, pointing at Carmilla’s upper arm which had her let out a long-suffering groan.

She looked at herself in the mirror, tired and bruised, flecks of gold staining her skin, but there was something else different about her. Much like the ink in Carmilla’s veins tended to make her look unearthly and Fae-like with blueish shadows and paper skin, the gold in Laura’s seemed to pervade her skin as well, giving her a subtle glow even when there was no light and marking her as decidedly not human.

It was…

It was an unsettling thought.

“ _The sun herself kissed the moon with golden fingers_ ,” she whispered, one hand pressed against her collarbones and she felt Carmilla freeze next to her.

“… _and turned black to blue, made dark turn day_ ,” the ink and paper girl continued softly, staring wide-eyed at Laura in the mirror as she lifted her own hand to show her the ink on her finger tips that shimmered blueish in the sunlight. A brighter blue than it had ever been before.

“ _So that they’ll find eternity in time’s endless rays_ ,” Laura finished. “It wasn’t just a poem, right?”

“Is it ever just a poem?” Carmilla dropped down next to her, wrapping one arm around Laura’s shoulders, the golden ink on her skin glowing.

“Don’t tell that to any English Lit majors,” Laura smiled, still a bit freaked out by what the mirror was telling them but sufficiently distracted when Carmilla suddenly twisted her arm to look at something written on her shoulder.

“Is that…” Carmilla turned to see her right arm clearer in the mirror. “Cupcake, is that a quote from _Buffy_?”

“It’s a great show?” Laura tried, giggling when Carmilla buried her face in the nape of her neck, breath tickling her skin.

“You’re killing me, Hollis,” the girl muttered into blonde, gold-tinged hair and Laura breathed in that familiar scent of ink and books and felt her bones melt.

“Good thought,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to the corner of Carmilla’s mouth. “Let’s do that at home, okay?”

“Home?”

“Home.”

* * *

  (So Laura closes her eyes and thinks of home.)

* * *

 Back at the ice rink, Laura’s friends were equal parts ecstatic and weary.

And while Kirsch apparently didn’t quite grasp the concept of secrecy by loudly chanting “Laura is a traveller!”, Mattie simply conveyed her worry and amusement with one arched brow as Perry let her head drop on the traveller’s shoulder in exhaustion which -

Yeah, there was more to that particular story than just faerie queens.

Lafontaine, on the other hand, thought that now was the perfect time for scientific discovery and with red-rimmed eyes they kept up a steady stream of barely punctuated questions and shone into Laura’s eyes with a pocket flashlight until Betty knocked them out with a syringe of –

_What_?

“Better don’t ask,” Betty said, clicking her finger against the needle, an unconscious bio major to their feet as Perry started fretting. “They really did need to get some sleep, they were deteriorating.”

“So you-“

“Yes.” Her roommate shot Laura a look, before a smirk pulled at her lips. “Good to see you, Hollis. Even though you’re kind of shiny.”

“I’m not _shiny_ ,” Laura protested, ignoring Carmilla snickering into her neck.

“You are,” Mel chimed in as she heaved an unconscious Laf over her shoulder, ignoring Kirsch’s insistence on being helpful and Perry acting like a headless chicken. “Only you could get yourself pulverized by an evil time warp and end up a sodding disco ball, Hollis. Good job.”

“I’m not-” Laura started again but quickly gave up protesting in favour of hiding her still gold-streaked face in Carmilla’s hair.

“Told you, your friends are awful people, cupcake,” Carmilla teased as they slowly made the trek back upstairs, leaving behind a mess of an ice rink spiked with arrows that everyone was way too tired to clean up.

“Heard that,” Betty yelled from somewhere in front of them. “And I wouldn’t antagonize the only person that’ll stand between you and an overprotective Papa Hollis when he finds out you played Back to the Future with his daughter.”

“Oh god,” Laura moaned, stopping dead in her tracks. “My dad is _so_ going to kill me.”

* * *

Somehow, and Laura doesn’t quite know how, they make their way home by subway at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, piling into Laura’s and Betty’s living room and crashing there like an oscillating heap of bodies.

Laura falls asleep on Carmilla’s shoulder, surrounded by friends and with a synchronized heartbeat under their fingers. And as she traces the golden letters on the ink and paper girl’s arm – her parents’ names and birthdates, the Canadian Association of Journalist’s code of ethics and her home address – she hears the faint rush of time’s river.

(Calling for her.)

* * *

 

 (a drawing i did while writing the story - i wanted to use it as a header but that might have given too much away;)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all, lovely readers, for having followed me on this journey;) there will either be an epilogue or a full on sequel - depending on how inspiration strikes which i'll probs post as a seperate story in a series - so i'll see you on the other side!

**Author's Note:**

> Updates every two to three days.  
> Questions? You can find me on [Tumblr](https://theo-la-dora.tumblr.com/)
> 
> There's also a [Playlist](https://theo-la-dora.tumblr.com/post/161890776064/ink-stained-a-playlist-1-begin-again-purity#post-notes)


End file.
